Understanding Grayscale Images

There are generally three formats that can be used to save graphic files. The most basic method is black and white, in which each pixel in a picture is either on (white) or off (black). The second method is color, in which color information for each pixel is also stored with the graphics file. The third method, and the one most appropriate to traditional publishing, is grayscale. In this method, color information is stored with the image, but it represents not colors of each pixel, but different shades of gray that the pixel can represent. Several different graphics file formats are used to save grayscale images, with the TIF format being the most prevalent.