Understanding Pixels and Resolution

In this article, we will try to understand what the pixels, megapixels and digital image resolution. And whether megapixel camera is an important factor in deciding which camera should you buy?

Pixels and Megapixels

A digital picture is made up of millions of tiny dots called pixels (pixel). Pixel itself is derived from the word stands for Picture Elements. Each pixel carries information that determines the color (hue), the power of the color (saturation) and how bright the colors display (brightness).

Because almost all the photos consists of millions of pixels (1 megapixel = 1 million pixels), then our naked eye can hardly recognize anymore a pixel separately, which is a unified whole visible images with subtle gradations between light and dark, color and tone shift .

If you want to see a pixel, occasionally try to resize the image resolution due. Like the photo below, this photo has a size of 600 × 450 pixels resolution.The size is fairly small as we still can not see a pixel, all 

looks smooth and seamlessly.

But by changing the resolution to 100 × 75 pixels, we can begin to see how the pixels composing a photo

Especially with the low resolution 40 × 30 pixels, each pixel box will start to look like arrangement puzzle. We can see the pixel by pixel - this phenomenon is commonly

 referred to pixelate:

Resolution Pictures To Print and Screen Monitor

Resolution of a digital image is measured in pixels per inch (ppi - pixels per inch), and the standard for quality picture resolution is 300 ppi. So if we know how many megapixels owned a digital camera, we can find the optimal print size for images produced with the camera.

For example, we assume a digital camera that has a resolution of 6 Megapixels (MP) to the exact size is 2816 pixels (length) x 2112 pixels (width) - bringing the total to 6 MP. To calculate the optimum print size that can be produced for our camera 2816 x 2112 pixels with 300 ppi and the result is 9.5 and 7 inches. So a digital camera with a resolution of 6MP can produce print images with the size of 9.5 x 7 inches or 24 x 18 cm.

To screen monitor, a standard used is 72ppi (Windows) and 96ppi (Mac), so tampilah on the screen is actually far less than the standard for print resolution (300 ppi). The meaning is, a photo that still looks good on the monitor is not necessarily a good time in print, but a picture that starts to look pixelate when printed at 300 ppi may still looks fine on a computer monitor.

Table Megapixels vs. Print Size A Photo

Below is an example of how the table optimum capacity of your camera produces a photo printed at 300 ppi or 200 ppi. In general, the average digital camera now (which began approaching the 24 megapixel resolution), has the ability to print much 

Camera	Print Size (300 ppi)	Print Size (200 ppi)
6 megapixels	24 x 18 cm (9,5 x 7 in)	36 x 27cm (14 x 10,5 in)
7 Megapixels	25 x 19 cm (10 x 7,5 in)	39 x 29cm (15,5 x 11,5 in)
8 Megapixels	28 x 20 cm (11 x 8 in)	42 x 30 cm (16,5 x 12 in)
10 Megapixels	33 x 20 cm (13 x 8,5 in)	49 x 33 cm (19,5 13 in)
12 Megapixels	37 x 24 cm (14,5 9,5 in)	55 x 36 cm ( 21,5 x 14 in)