What is Pixel Binning?

What is pixel binning?

Pixel overlay yada Pixel Grouping (Pixel Binning) is an increasingly common feature in camera-based applications.

First off, tech companies like to brag about how many megapixels new camera sensors have, and so the average smartphone user believes that higher megapixel count means better image quality. Actually, that’s not the case at all. Image quality is determined by the size of the sensor, not the number of pixels on it.

Number of megapixels, determines the maximum image resolution your phone can capture. The only practical benefit of this is that you can zoom in and crop your photos without blurring them.

Pixel overlay To understand the concept, it is important to first understand what the pixel mentioned here is. In this context, what we refer to as “pixels” is not the light-emitting pixels on the screen, but the photosites that capture the light in the camera sensor.

Also known as photosite, pixels are physical bits on the camera sensor that capture light to create a photo. Microns (millionths of a meter) are used to measure pixel size, and anything smaller than a micron is considered small.

A larger pixel can gather more light than a smaller pixel. Therefore, in a dark bar or at dusk, when the light is low, you often want to use a sensor with a large pixel size to be able to capture more light to achieve the desired image quality. On the other hand, a smaller pixel helps you capture small objects and details.

What is Pixel Binning?

Pixel overlay yada Pixel grouping (Pixel Binning) is an image processing technique in which four or more neighboring pixels in a camera sensor are combined to form a superpixel that has the sum or average value of all pixels in it. .

Pixel size it is usually measured in microns (millionths of a meter) and anything one micron or below is considered small.

To sum it up in one sentence, pixel grouping is a process that combines data from four pixels into a single pixel.

Pixel Overlay The electrical charge from adjacent CMOS or CCD sensor pixels is combined into a single superpixel to reduce interference by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in digital cameras.

A camera sensor is basically a plate of millions of pixels that capture ambient light. Therefore, the more pixels there are, the more light they can capture to produce a better image.

The default benefits of pixel grouping are due to powerful image processing algorithms and the chipset in your phone, not the technique itself. It’s the latter that does the hard work to make your footage look brighter, less grainy, and more vibrant.

The major disadvantage of this technique is that your resolution is effectively quadrupled when shooting a group of pixels. This means that a frame taken from a 48 MP camera is actually 12 MP. The 64MP camera takes 16MP superimposed snapshots. Likewise, on a 16MP camera the binded shot is only 4MP.

The reason why a lower resolution photo with a group of pixels sometimes looks better than a full resolution photo is because it’s harder to apply image algorithms on a larger photo because it uses more processing power. A smaller photo can be processed immediately.

The purpose of pixel grouping is ultimately to allow raising the maximum theoretical image resolution a smartphone camera can take, while lowering it enough so that your phone can quickly process your photos for everyday use.

Scroll to top