Bit Image

Bit Image, in computer science, a sequential collection of bits that represents, in memory, an image to be displayed on the screen, particularly in systems having a graphical user interface. Each bit in a bit image corresponds to one pixel (dot) on the screen. The screen itself, for example, represents a single bit image; similarly, the dot patterns for all the characters in a font represent a bit image of the font. On a computer such as the Macintosh 512K, which has a black-and-white screen, the bit values in a bit image can be either 0, to display white, or 1, to display black. The “pattern” of 0s and 1s in the bit image then determines the pattern of white and black dots forming an image on the screen. On a Macintosh or other computer that supports colour, the corresponding description of on-screen bits is called a pixel image because more than one bit is needed to represent each pixel. See also Computer.