Isnt it a fact that all digital sensors are rated in Mpixels
but that is counting each of the mono red, green and blue pixels and when they convert to full color the image is interpolated
upward to achive the same "Mpixel" figure. i.e. since it takes
4 mono pixels to create one color pixel, a 6Mpixel rated sensor
is really a 1.5 Mpixel color sensor but the marketing guys
like to keep that a secret.
No, that's not quite the case. The simplest way of converting a bayer pattern to an RGB bitmap is as you describe, but you can do cunning tricks that take advantage of the fact that the individual colour sensors are separated spatially to improve the recorded detail. As a very rough rule of thumb, you could regard a 6MP bayer-pattern sensor to be equivalent in terms of resolving detail to a 3MP sensor that uses pixels sensitive to all three colour components (eg the Foveon sensors). This is a very debatable subject though. :-)
S
