Image maniputlation Software

Graeme — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:12:23 +0000

Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation software, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems. It has been described as “an industry standard for graphics professionals.

Paintshop Pro is a raster graphics editor and, later in the series, a vector graphics editor for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system that was originally published by Minneapolis-based Jasc Software. In October 2004, Corel Corporation purchased Jasc Software and the distribution rights to Paint Shop Pro.

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful.

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring

Photoshop is a very good manipulation soft package and remains the industry standard due to its powerful tools and its ease of use but Paintshop Pro offers the same sort of tools as photoshop but with the add extra of vector imaging and is cheaper that its photoshop rival. If money is a problem then freeware such gimp and Paint.NET offer some good tools but lack to power of paid soft.

Scanners

Graeme — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:03:44 +0000

A scanner is a device that optically scans images, printed text, or an object, and converts it to a digital image and there are 4 main types of scanner:

Flatbed – The most commonly used house hold scanner due to the there low price that works like similarly to a photocopier; the item you wish to scan is positioned face down on a glass plate. The flat design can accommodate thinck objects such as thick books and allows for exact alignment.

Drum - Original artwork is attached to the outside of a spinning glass drum. The image is scanned by photo multiplier tubes (PMTs) and is captured to a disk file. This type of scanner gives the best quality result. Most commonly found in offices due.

Hand - Comes in two forms: document and 3D scanners. Hand held document scanners are manual devices that are dragged across the surface of the image to be scanned.

Film – Scanner dedicated to capturing image files from slides and negatives.

When it comes to choosing a scanner you should identify what the scanner is going to be used for small jobs a flat bed is going to be the best option. For heavy dutie scanning then a drum scanner would be best as it provides more options.

Integration and Interactivity

Graeme — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:27:47 +0000

The intergration of new technologies within multimedia means that right now we have a greater control of our multimedia environment from desktop pcs that can access any number of multimedia tasks to mobile phones such as Apples iPhone with the ability to access the web play games, run multible apps so on we interact with multimedia as never before. According to Nathan Shedroff , interactivity, in terms of multimedia, can be defined by six major components:

Feedback
Control
Creativity
Productivity
Communications
Adaptivity

What are the essential elements in a multimedia development task?

Graeme — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:46:32 +0000

When starting a multimedia project you need to get an idea of the width and depth of the project at hand and begin to from some ideas what the project should end up like, a sort of mental model. This should to form by the end of the project analysis. Once that has been completed you can move onto the design process. When the design process has been completed, we can start to break down the project in terms of competencies, time, budget, media creation tools and resources.

Good and Bad

Graeme — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:24:27 +0000

Here are a list of features that any multimedia product or project should follow to make it a success and below are things to avoid when creating.

Good Features

1. Ease of Use
2. Ease of Learning
3. Reinforces intent
4. Personal Preference
5. Engagement
6. Dynamic Learning
7. Fun
8. Learning without being aware
9. Speed of execution – connected

Bad Features

1. Cumbersome to use
2. Disorgansed
3. Irrelevant Content
4. Boring
5. Repetitive
6. Treats user as an idiot
7. Instant failure and a bad reputation

Camera Comparison

Graeme — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:07:39 +0000

Capturing is video and still images is a very import part of multimeda and you want to make sure that you are using the best equipment possibel for the job your are doing and this can be tricky with so many options.

SLR (Single Lens Reflex) refers to how the light enters the camera. These are the cameras you see many professionals and serious amateurs lugging around. These cameras have a larger body than most P&S cameras and interchangeable lenses. While SLRs started out a fully manual, where the photographer had to control all features including focus, most of these cameras are capable of acting in a fully automatic mode just like a P&S. Many now allow the photographer the freedom to also take control of all functions or any combination of functions. These cameras allow for great control over the photography process and allow the photographer to take images not always possible with a P&S.

Features

* shutter speed
* aperture
* film speed
* focus point
* magnification (through the use of various lenses)
* capability for add-on flashes
* remote releases
* additional battery packs

Canon EOS 500D Digital SLR Camera

Compact Digital cameras tend to be small, light weight and portable. The are suitable for casual and snapshot use hense the nickname “point and shoot”. Compact cameras are usually designed to be easy to use, sacrificing advanced features and picture quality for compactness and simplicity; images can usually only be stored using lossy compression (JPEG).

Features

* Metering systems, which calculates the amount of light entering the camera
* Variable shutter speed
* Variable aperture
* Zoom lenses
* Automatic focus
* Preset controls for various photographic situations such as:

landscapes
nighttime
people
close-up or macro

Samsung ES15 Digital Camera

When choosing a Camcorder for multimedia there are quite alot of options depending on what type of project your working on -

If your are looking for a camcorder to shoot creative projects such as short films or TV programs you’re looking for a camcorder that’s going to give you a broadcast quality picture and be compatible with professional video editing programs and equipment. You will also want to manually adjust things such as your camcorders focus and aperture. MiniDV is currently the most popular format used for professional camcorders. MiniDV allows you to shoot high quality video and thats compatible with all major video editing programs. MiniDV camcorders are typically more affordable than their HDD and DVD counterparts due to th fact that they use tape. Each MiniDV tape will typically hold an hour of footage depending on the filming quality i.e HD.

Features:

Optical Image Stabiliser
Total manual image control
20x Optical Zoom/100xDigital Zoom

Canon DM-XM2 Professional MiniDV Camcorder

When making small clips from multimedia like streaming content i.e youtube videos a hard disk camcorder are probabliy your best option as they are reletively cheap, light weight and simple to use some even offer 1 click uploading to youtube. The video can be capture a variety of formats and is stored directy to a memory card. Mery Cards can store anything from 1Gb to 100Gb depending on the price your willing to pay for it. A hard disk camcorder breaks up each recording session into different files making it easy for you find and upload the individual clips you want after shooting.

Features:

On board Storage
point and shoot

JVC GZ-MG630S

High speed camcorders are used to film slow motion playback films. Where a normal camera will capture 25 frames per second for film or Tv a high speed camera will capture 250,000, the fastest will captuer upto 2 million frames per second. They tend to be used for scientic research such as car safty tests and documeterys. They are highly expernsive that can cost upto and beyone £50,000.

Features

high speed vidoe capture

Target audience/Prior Planning

Graeme — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:29:54 +0000

The target audience is who the product is aimed at not the client who wants you to create the product say for example say someone whats you to make a website for a golf club (course rather the putter or 9 iron) you would have to identify who would be using the course mostly older people with bit of money say mid 30s – 70s so the site will have to match up to their idea of what an expensive golf club and attract the clubs demographics and this is where the prior planning comes into to play. First you would have to research the project at hand and gather resources and and start to think of concepts for the product which involve analysing the target audience and building a user profile so that you have a solid idea of what the target audience is looking for and that it meets the clients need as well. Then you can move onto design.

Elsom-Cook

Graeme — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:06:05 +0000

Mark Elsom-Cook author of Principles of Interactive Multimedia describes multimedia as

The combination of a variety of communication channels into a co-ordinated communicative experience for which an integrated cross-channel language of interpretation does not exist.

CD/DVD Burner Comparison

Graeme — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:47:34 +0000

Most people today tend to think that a DVD burner is better than a CD burner maybe because people tend to view CDs as old technologie thats been around since the 80′s and that CDs cant hold the same amount of data as the newer DVD option but I think that once you compare the two technologies you will find that both have advantages and disadvantages over the other.

DVD burners are useful when you are looking to copy a DVD or burn video files to a DVD format to be played on another computer or DVD player. They also allow users to store Gigabytes of data making it a very good tool for backing up. The only problem with the DVD disc is that it requires a DVD-ROM to access and read the data and if your in say a situation where the disc has to be opened a couple of different machines some may not be able to open the disc since some might not have DVD-ROMs. Another problem is that have a problem with storing audio such as MP3′s mainly because DVDs cant be run on a normal CD-ROM or CD player

CD Burners are somewhat slower than todays DVD burners but they do have more pros than con’s when comparing to a DVD Burner for data back-ups. Blank Discs for CD Burners cant hold as much data as a DVD they tend to hold up to 700Mb but CD-R discs can hold data or audio and can be read in almost any CD-ROM and if the CD-R is made into an audio disc then they can be read by a Hi-Fi or a car CD Player

So as you can see both have their pros and cons and it really depends on the type of things that you burning that makes one better than the other for burning video and storing large amounts of data the DVD burner is better but if you are making burning audio and smaller files that you wish to use else where than CD burners are better it just depends on the job at hand

LCD Projector

Graeme — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:02:17 +0000

LCP (liquid crystal display) Projector are projection units for displaying video, images or computer data on a screen or flat surface that tend display whatever on a desktop of a computer or a specific computer application such as Power Point.