Image Editing Tools

  

Image Editing Tools:

            

 Image - editing applications are specialized and powerful tools for enhancing and retouching existing bitmapped images. These applications also provide many of the features and tools of painting and drawing programs and can be used to create images from scratch as well as images digitized from scanners, video frame -grabbers, digital cameras, clip art files, or original artwork files created with a painting or drawing packages.

             Here are some features typical of image-editing applications and of interest to multimedia developers:

·         Multiple windows that provide views of more than one image at a time.

·         Conversion of major image-data type and industry-standard file formats.

·         Direct inputs of images from scanner and video sources.

·         Employment of a virtual memory scheme that uses hard disk space as RAM for images that requir large amounts of memory.

·         Capable selection tools, such as rectangle, lassos, and magic wands, for selecting portions of a bitmap.

·         Image and balance controls for brightness,contrast,and color balance.

·         Good masking features.

·         Multiple undo and restore features.

·         Anti-aliasing capability and sharpening and smoothing controls.

·         Color-mapping controls for precise adjustment of color balance.

·         Tools for retouching, blurring, sharpening lightening darkening smudging and tinting.

·         Geometric transformations such as flip, skeq, rotate and distort, and perspective changes.

·         Ability to resample and resize an image.

·         24-bit color, 8- or 4-bit indexed color, 8- bit gray-scale, black-and-white, and customizable color palettes.

·         Ability to create images from scratch, using line,rectangle,square circle ellipse polygen airbrush,paintbrush,pencil,and eraser tools with customizable brush shapes and user-definable bucket and gradient fills.

·         Multiple typefaces, styles and sizes and type manipulation and masking routines.

·         Filters for special effects such as crystallize dry brush emboss, facet, fresco, graphic pen, mosaic, pixelize, poster, ripple, smooth, splatter, stucco, twirl, watercolor, wave and wind.
 

·         Support for third-party special- effect plug-ins.

·         Ability to design in layers that can be combined, hidden, and reordered.

Sound Editing Tools:

             Sound editing tools for both digitized and MIDI sound let you see music as well  as hear it. By drawing the representation of the sound in a waveform, you can cut, copy, paste and edit segments of the sound with great precision and making your own sound effects.

             Using editing tools to make your own MIDI files requires knowing about keys, notations and instruments and you will need a MIDI synthesizer or device connected to the computer. 

Drawing:

               Drawing is a visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint. An artist who practices or works in drawing may be referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman.

               The most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard, or indeed almost anything. The medium has also become popular as a means of public expression via graffiti art, because of the easy availability of permanent markers.

Painting:

               Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base). In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete. Paintings may be decorated with gold leaf, and some modern paintings incorporate other materials including sand, clay, and scraps of paper.

3-D Modeling and Animation Tools

         3-D Modeling software has increasingly entered the mainstream of graphic design as its ease of use improves. As a result the graphic production values and expectations for multimedia projects have risen.

         With 3-D modeling software, objects rendered in perspective appear more realistic; you can create stunning scenes and wander through them, choosing just the right lighting and perspective for your final rendered image.

         Powerful modeling packages such as Autodesk’s Discreet, Strata Vision's 3D, Secular’sLogo Motion and Infini-D, Alias' Wave front, Avoid's Softimage, and Cagliari’strue Space are also bundled with assortments of prerendered 3-D clip art  objects such as people, furniture, buildings, cars, airplanes, trees and plants.

         Important for multimedia developers many 3-D modeling applications also include export features enabling you to save a moving view or journey through your scene as a QuickTime or AVI animation file.

         Each rendered 3-D image takes from a few seconds to a few hours to complete. Depending upon the complexity of the drawing and the number of drawn objects included in it. If you are making a complex walk-through or flyby, plan to set aside many hours of rendering time on your computer.

         A good 3-D modeling tool should include the following features:

1.    Multiple windows that allow you to view your model in each dimension from the camera's perspective, and in a rendered preview.
2. Ability to drag and drop primitive shapes into a scene.
3. Ability to create and sculpt organic objects from scratch with Bezier spline drawing tools.
4. Lathe and extrude features.
5. Color and texture mapping.
6. Ability to add realistic effects such as transparency, shadowing, and fog.
7. Ability to add spot, local, and global lights, to place them anywhere, and manipulate them for special lighting effects.
8. Unlimited cameras with focal length control.
9. Ability to draw spline- based paths for animation.
 

Video Editing

What is Video Editing?

             Video editing is the process of manipulating and rearranging video shots to create a new work. Editing is usually considered to be one part of the post production process — other post-production tasks include titling, colour correction, sound mixing, etc.

            Many people use the term editing to describe all their post-production work, especially in non-professional situations. Whether or not you choose to be picky about terminology is up to you. In this tutorial we are reasonably liberal with our terminology and we use the word editing to mean any of the following:

    * Rearranging, adding and/or removing sections of video clips and/or audio clips.
    * Applying color correction, filters and other enhancements.
    * Creating transitions between clips

The Goals of Editing:

          There are many reasons to edit a video and your editing approach will depend on the desired outcome. Before you begin you must clearly define your editing goals, which could include any of the following:

2.    Remove unwanted footage

3.    Choose the best footage

4.    Create a flow

5.    Add effects, graphics, music,

6.    Alter the style, pace or mood of the video

7.    Give the video a particular "angle"