About bitmap images

Bitmap images--technically called raster images--are made up of a grid of dots known as pixels. When working with bitmap images, you edit pixels rather than objects or shapes. Bitmap images are the most common electronic medium for continuous-tone images, such as photographs or digital paintings, because they can represent subtle gradations of shades and color.

Bitmap images can lose detail when scaled on-screen because they are resolution-dependent, they contain a fixed number of pixels, and each pixel is assigned a specific location and color value. Bitmapped images can look jagged if they're printed at too low a resolution because the size of each pixel is increased (see Understanding image size and resolution).


Example of a bitmap image at different levels of magnification