Multimedia - Graphics — common mistakes

In calculation questions, always show your working step-by-step, as marks are often awarded for intermediate steps even if the final answer is incorrect. State the formula you are using. Pay close attention to the units required in the answer (e.g., bits, bytes, KB, MiB) and show your conversions clearly.

Be prepared to compare and contrast bitmap and vector graphics. A common exam question asks you to recommend a graphic type for a given scenario (e.g., a company logo vs. a holiday photograph) and justify your choice based on properties like scalability, file size, and editability.

Not necessarily. Image resolution is the number of pixels in the image file itself (e.g., 4000x3000). Screen resolution is the number of pixels your monitor can display (e.g., 1920x1080). If you view a high-resolution image on a low-resolution screen, the computer must scale it down to fit.

The formula calculates the size of the raw, uncompressed pixel data. Most image file formats (like JPEG, PNG, GIF) use compression algorithms to reduce the file size. They also contain metadata (data about the image), which adds a small amount to the total size.

Technically, a kilobyte (KB) is 1000 bytes, and a kibibyte (KiB) is 1024 bytes. Historically, 'KB' was used for 1024 bytes in computing. For the 9618 syllabus, using the 1024 convention for KB, MB, GB is standard practice and generally accepted unless the question specifies using powers of 10.

Yes, through a process called 'tracing' or 'vectorisation'. Software attempts to identify edges and shapes in the bitmap and convert them into mathematical paths. The success of this process varies greatly depending on the complexity of the original image. Converting a vector to a bitmap (rasterisation) is much simpler.