For example, there can be " printed pixels" in a page, or pixels carried by electronic signals, or represented by digital values, or pixels on a display device, or pixels in a digital camera (photosensor elements). However, the definition is highly context-sensitive. This image shows alternative ways of reconstructing an image from a set of pixel values, using dots, lines, or smooth filtering.Ī pixel is generally thought of as the smallest single component of a digital image. Technical Ī pixel does not need to be rendered as a small square. An archaic British word meaning "possession by spirits ( pixies)", the term has been used to describe the animation process since the early 1950s various animators, including Norman McLaren and Grant Munro, are credited with popularizing it. Pixilation, spelled with a second i, is an unrelated filmmaking technique that dates to the beginnings of cinema, in which live actors are posed frame by frame and photographed to create stop-motion animation. This measurement is used to make sure a given element will display as the same size no matter what screen resolution views it. Pixels, abbreviated as "px", are also a unit of measurement commonly used in graphic and web design, equivalent to roughly 1⁄ 96 inch (0.26 mm). For example, IBM used it in their Technical Reference for the original PC. In graphics and in image and video processing, pel is often used instead of pixel. Some authors explain pixel as picture cell, as early as 1972. According to various etymologies, the earliest publication of the term picture element itself was in Wireless World magazine in 1927, though it had been used earlier in various U.S. The concept of a "picture element" dates to the earliest days of television, for example as " Bildpunkt" (the German word for pixel, literally 'picture point') in the 1888 German patent of Paul Nipkow. McFarland said simply it was "in use at the time" (circa 1963). McFarland, at the Link Division of General Precision in Palo Alto, who in turn said he did not know where it originated. Billingsley had learned the word from Keith E. Billingsley of JPL, to describe the picture elements of scanned images from space probes to the Moon and Mars. The word "pixel" was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. By 1938, "pix" was being used in reference to still pictures by photojournalists. The word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures, in reference to movies. The word pixel is a combination of pix (from "pictures", shortened to "pics") and el (for " element") similar formations with ' el' include the words voxel and texel. In some contexts (such as descriptions of camera sensors), pixel refers to a single scalar element of a multi-component representation (called a photosite in the camera sensor context, although sensel is sometimes used), while in yet other contexts (like MRI) it may refer to a set of component intensities for a spatial position. In color imaging systems, a color is typically represented by three or four component intensities such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. In digital imaging, a pixel, pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in an all points addressable display device so it is the smallest controllable element of a picture represented on the screen.Įach pixel is a sample of an original image more samples typically provide more accurate representations of the original. A photograph of sub-pixel display elements on a laptop's LCD screen