Graphics involves writing pixels to a display device. In Chapter 12 we looked at the more refined ways of doing this, but for power-pixel manipulation, nothing in Windows comes close to BitBlt and its two cousins, PatBlt and StretchBlt. BitBlt (pronounced ”bit blit“) stands for ”bit-block transfer.“ BitBlt is a pixel-mover, or (more vividly) a raster-blaster. The simple word ”transfer“ doesn't really do justice to BitBlt. It does more than a transfer—it really does a logical combination of three sets of pixels using 1 of 256 different types of raster operations.