continuous tone
Refers to images that have a virtually unlimited range of color or shades of grays. Photographs and television images, for example, are continuous-tone images. In contrast, computer hardware and software is digital, which means that they can represent only a limited number of colors and gray levels. Converting a black-and-white continuous-tone image into a computer image is known as gray scaling.
Continuous-tone printers can print each dot at many different shades of lightness and darkness. Though this isn’t true continuous-tone because the level of shades is limited, there are enough shades (256 or more) so that the difference between one shade and the next is imperceptible to the human eye.
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- contone printer
A type of printer that uses a combination of dithering and printing at different levels of intensity to produce different colors and different shades of lightness and darkness. Unlike a true continuous-tone printer, contone printers can lay down at ink at only a few different levels of intensity (usually 8). To produce the full range […]
- contrast ratio
In reference to computer monitors, the measurement of the difference in light intensity between the brightest white and the darkest black. Contrast ratio is often used in marketing computer monitors, where a high contrast ratio, such as 400:1, represents a better color representation (the better the information will appear against a darker background) on the […]
- companding
Formed from the words compressing and expanding. A PCM compression technique where analog signal values are rounded on a non-linear scale. The data is compressed before sent and then expanded at the receiving end using the same non-linear scale. Companding reduces the noise and crosstalk levels at the receiver.
- compact disc
Known by its abbreviation, CD, a compact disc is a polycarbonate with one or more metal layers capable of storing digital information. The most prevalent types of compact discs are those used by the music industry to store digital recordings and CD-ROMs used to store computer data. Both of these types of compact disc are […]
- control bus
The physical connections that carry control information between the CPU and other devices within the computer. Whereas the data bus carries actual data that is being processed, the control bus carries signals that report the status of various devices. For example, one line of the bus is used to indicate whether the CPU is currently […]