28 January, 2002

Resolution

When you are attempting to make your Windows screen more friendly and easy to use, often you are encouraged to make sure that your graphics have the correct "resolution." What exactly does this mean?

The resolution is the total number of pixels per inch on a screen. (Short for picture element, a pixel is the smallest logical unit of visual information that can be used to build an image. Pixels are the little squares that can be seen when a graphics image is enlarged. The more pixels there are in an image, the better its resolution.) For example, when changing the screen resolution in Windows, you may use 640 x 480 or 1024 x 768. This number is the number of pixels horizontally x vertically. For 640 x 480, the total number of pixels is 307,200.

So why not make a screen have millions of pixels and get a great image? The reason for this is your computer must map and draw each pixel. This takes significant computer power. This is also why, when you set your resolution to 1280 x 1024. Windows will not allow the large color combinations. It just simply takes too much computing power.