A painting package produces images by changing the colour of pixels on the screen.

These are coded as a pattern of bits to create a bitmapped graphics file.

Bitmapped graphics are used for images such as scanned photographs or pictures taken with a digital camera.

Advantages

The main advantage offered by this type of graphic is that individual pixels can be changed which makes very detailed editing possible.

Disadvantages of painting packages

• Individual parts of an image cannot be resized;
• only the whole picture can be increased or decreased in size.
• Information has to be stored about every pixel in an image which produces files that use large amounts of backing storage space.

Examples of graphics packages that produce bitmapped images include:- MS Paint, PC Paintbrush, Adobe Photoshop and JASC’s Paint Shop Pro.