An operator which combines two integers by XORing each of their component bits. If one of the source bits is zero and the other one, the destination bit is one. Otherwise, the destination bit is zero. For example, decimal 10 (binary 1010) XOR 12 (1100) equals 6 (0110), because the first bits are the same (1 and 1), the second and third bits are different (0 and 1, and 1 and 0, respectively), and the fourth bits are the same (0 and 0). A very useful color inversion technique involves bitwise XORing the component colors, mostly because a bitwise XOR is fully reversible, so you can easily restore the original image.