Illustration and Font Design

Abstract

When you’re drawing or painting in the GIMP, you’re working with bitmap files, which for color images are more correctly termed pixmaps (an abbreviation of pixel maps). As you have seen when editing photos, these pixmap files are just numerous rows and columns of identical size pixels in different colors and shades, like the tiles in a mosaic. This is a perfectly good way to represent typical photographic images, as long as you have enough pixels (resolution) for the job you’re doing. A pixmap is sometimes referred to as a raster image, in reference to the way cathode ray tubes in older computer displays and TV sets drew images on the screen.