Understanding scanning

[ulrichburke]

I'm adding this not to usurp anything but just cos I'm trying to wrap my head around all of this kinda stuff...

 

If he'd scanned it, wouldn't the scanning process have produced a copy made out of pixels? And once the copy, presumably made out of pixels cos I can't for the life of me find out anything else it could be made out of unless he's got some kinds scanner that turns things into vectors, had been made, how the heck would it have points on it smaller than one pixel? And if it's possible for a scanner that presumably turns things it scans into pixels to rebuild the image CAN use something smaller than one pixel to represent part of the image - why the heck can't Paint.Net do the same thing to make images smoother? I mean if it can SHOW the image with its less-than-one-pixel parts in its screen, then it can HANDLE less-than-one-pixel elements.  If it can HANDLE them, why can't it CREATE them?

 

The more dumbass questionss - and they're serious questions, I seriously do have these problems understanding this cos the logicd don't make sense - of mine people answer, the sooner I'll go away and leve you guys in peace...

 

Yours hopefully Chris.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Chris I've split your post into its own thread. The one you posted in ( http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/6768-how-do-i-resize-an-image-without-it-being-blurry-or-pixel/ ) is years old.

The reason than scanning can increase the number of pixels is that scanners can sample the source image at a very high density. Let's call the density the DPI or dots-per-inch.

If we scan a one inch square postage stamp at 300 DPI we get an image that is 300 pixels square.

If we scan the same stamp at 1200 DPI we'll get an image 1200 pixels square. Its the same sized source image. Sampled at a tighter density, we get a lot more pixels to play with.