Message text written by INTERNET:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Pretend I'm from Missouri.... So, they just butt right up to each other? I've always envisioned an array, something akin to a CRT in reverse, where the pixels are set in a screen of sorts.
William Robb< they are in an array whose exact configuration depends on the manufacturer. the pixels are large enough to not be able to call them points. although they do not touch each other, they are very close together, usually closer together than the size of a pixel. the most key point is that the pixels are not points, they are areas, usually close to square or octagonal. within the area of the pixel, all color changes are averaged together because all of the light goes to activating the one pixel no matter what different colors strike where the pixel. the hardware reads the pixel as a single value. it's actually more complicated than this with blur filters, Bayer patterns of pixels, but if you were recording grayscale mode, which many digital cameras do by changing a setting, the simpler explanation is close enough. yes, there is stuff not sampled between the pixels, but at a high enough resolution, the change between adjacent pixels is not very rapid and so the eye, seeing the dots close together, blends them together. if you want to think of it that way, film grain is the same as pixels too, but they are smaller and randomly arranged. large scale grain patterns appear as dye clumps to people because people are designed to see patterns in everything even though they are random. these patterns are what most people talk about when they talk about visible grain. the actual grains are far too tiny to see under ordinary magnification. if you could drive a monitor with a resolution of 3Kx2K, or 6 megapixels, you would see basically continuous tones at normal viewing distances. there are such monitors made, although i missed my opportunity to check them out when i had the chance. Herb....
