Overview
Images are the most important form of media on the internet, constituting more than 75% of all internet traffic. Nearly every modern application or website uses images to help reach their goals. Modern developers and designers have been able to successfully wield images because much of the complexity around digital imaging has been abstracted away into tools and best practices. However, as the internet has rapidly expanded visually and a multitude of new devices and screens have entered the market, knowing where to reach and what to reach for to get the most out of your images requires a knowledge of how images fundamentally work. You do not have to become an imaging scientist to get the most out of your images, but gaining a ground-level perspective of how images work can help you become a more effective developer or designer.
In this talk, Chris will walk through the basics of how images are built from what gets stored as bytes into what we see with our eyes. From there, he will explore the different forms of digital images and the motivations behind each. Finally, with an underlying understanding of digital images established, Chris will take a tour of modern advancements in digital imaging and how they work under the hood.
Objective
Teach developers and designers how to get the most out of images by taking them through the basics of digital imaging all the way through to modern day imaging advancements.
Target Audience
Developers and designers
Assumed Audience Knowledge
A basic fluency of data structures, like arrays, vectors and matrices (in the very basic sense; a full mathematical understanding of these things is not required)
Five Things Audience Members Will Learn
- How images are captured, constructed, stored, and compressed
- Colorspaces, channels, and why they matter
- The tradeoffs and motivations of different file formats
- Performance angles to consider when serving images
- Modern imaging advancements like high-dynamic range images, seam carving, super resolution, and AI-driven imaging
