Binary image

A binary image format is often used in contexts where it is important to have a small file size for transmission or storage, or due to color limitations on displays or printers.

It also has technical and artistic applications, for example in digital image processing and pixel art.

It allows efficient computation of Voronoi diagrams, where each pixel in an image is assigned to the nearest of a set of points.

The simplest form of segmentation is probably Otsu's method which assigns pixels to foreground or background based on grayscale intensity.

Thinning or skeletonization produces binary images which consist of pixel-wide lines.

In the TWAIN standard PC interface for scanners and digital cameras, the first flavor is called vanilla and the reversed one chocolate.

While early computers such as the ZX81 used the restriction as a necessity of the hardware, hand-held LCD games such as Game & Watch and Tamagotchi, alongside early computers with a focus on graphic user interfaces like the Macintosh made large steps in promoting the culture, technique and aesthetic of the restrictions of 1-bit art.

[7] Best-seller games like Gato Roboto, Return of the Obra Dinn, Minit and World of Horror use 1bit as a style to give their games a retro feel[8] or to simply save the graphic designers time in development.

[11] Not a lot of artists mainly do 1bit art, but many of them stay in contact with each other to exchange knowledge about working with the restriction, and hosting own collaborations.

Obvious differences in 1bit art styles are for example whether, how much and what kind of dithering is being used, the image resolution, the use of outlines and how detailed the artwork is.

Some input/output devices, such as laser printers, fax machines, and bi-level computer displays, can only handle binary images.

Each pixel in the sensor has a binary response, giving only a one-bit quantized measurement of the local light intensity.