 The camera interpolates the color information of neighboring sensor elements, through a process called demosaicing, to create the final image.These sensor elements are often called "pixels", even though they only record 1 channel (only red or green or blue) of the final color image.Thus, two of the three color channels for each sensor must be interpolated and a so-called "N-megapixel" camera that produces an N-megapixel image provides only one-third of the information that an image of the same size could get from a scanner.