Graphics and Media

The way pixels (and metadata) are encoded into a file — different formats trade size, quality, and feature support.

The smallest addressable element of a digital image — a tiny coloured square that, together with billions of others, makes up what you see on a screen.

A pair of algorithms — encoder and decoder — that compress and decompress media. The reason a 4K video isn't a terabyte.

A specific way of describing colours numerically — defining which RGB triplets (or other coordinates) mean which colours in the real world.

The technique of turning vector shapes (triangles, lines, text) into pixels — the dominant way real-time 3D graphics get drawn.

The most common lossy image format — it shrinks photographs dramatically by discarding visual detail the human eye barely notices, trading some quality for much smaller files.

A lossless image format that preserves every pixel exactly and supports transparency — ideal for graphics, logos, screenshots, and text, where JPEG's lossy compression would smear detail.

A rendering technique that simulates light by tracing the paths of rays through a scene — producing physically accurate reflections, shadows, and lighting at a high computational cost.

A small program that runs on the GPU to compute how geometry and pixels are drawn — controlling position, color, lighting, and effects — executed in parallel across millions of elements.

An encoder/decoder that compresses video by exploiting redundancy within and between frames — the reason streaming and storing high-resolution video is feasible at all.

A technique for reducing the "jaggies" (staircase effect) in digital images by smoothing the transition between foreground and background pixels — using spatial supersampling, temporal accumulation, or AI upscaling.

A system for ensuring that colours are reproduced consistently across different devices — cameras, monitors, and printers — by converting between device-specific colour spaces using ICC profiles and a device-independent colour reference space.

High Dynamic Range imaging captures and displays a wider range of luminance — from very dark to very bright — than standard displays, requiring new formats, tone mapping, and colour science to render correctly.

A text rendering technique that exploits the individual RGB subpixels of an LCD display to increase apparent horizontal resolution — making text appear crisper and more readable at small font sizes.