Bitmap

Bitmap in computer graphics refers to the storage of digital images as a ‘map of bits’ (‘bits’ being a single unit of information stored on a computer. In some contexts, the term bitmap implies one bit per pixel, while pixmap is used for images with multiple bits per pixel. Many graphical user interfaces use bitmaps in their built-in graphics subsystems, the most common being the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 platforms' GDI subsystem usually named with the file extension of .BMP (or .DIB for device-independent bitmap). Besides BMP, other file formats that store literal bitmaps include InterLeaved Bitmap (ILBM), Portable Bitmap (PBM), X Bitmap (XBM), and Wireless Application Protocol Bitmap (WBMP). Similarly, most other image file formats, such as JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and GIF, also store bitmap images (as opposed to vector images), but they are not usually referred to as bitmaps, since they use compressed formats internally.