Question

I really want to learn how an image is composed (i.e. array of bits, or however, how is the color composed for each pixel, etc). Can you point me in the right direction? I’m not really sure what to search for.

Thanks a lot in advance.

So what I want to do is to be able to modify the picture pragmatically, i.e. change to black and white, scale it, crop it, etc, and for this I would really like to learn how the image is composed instead of just finding these algorithms online.

Answer 1

You don’t always need to know low level mathematical details(matrixes,quantisation,fourier transform etc.) of graphic formats to manipulate images.
For all the things you want to do you may use proper libraries.
For example in PHP libraries used freuqently to manipulate images are:

• GD – http://php.net/manual/en/book.image.php
• ImageMagick – http://php.net/manual/en/book.imagick.php