Graphics is a wide encompassing term in that it covers things such as animations, stills, cartoons, drawings, photographs, movies, paintings and so on. Whichever type you choose there are two sides to them. You can make your own or just view. A wide variety of software is available for these tasks. These pages look at some of the different types of graphics, their uses and how you can view and create your own.
There are several ways of getting pictures onto the screen. One of the obvious ways is to actually draw a picture yourself. Instead of physical brushes, pencils, pens, crayons etc a mouse is usually used - although there are other tools that can be used instead. The screen is your paper or canvas except that it can extend far beyond the physical viewing area. The screen is merely a window or porthole and the mouse a remote control. Scroll bars enable you to see areas outside of the screen width. It is usually possible to zoom in or out of the picture so that you can see more of it on screen. Virtual brushes, pens etc can be called up from a toolbar so that the mouse effectively behaves like the corresponding physical tool. Graphics packages are available for drawing and picture manipulation. There are also packages purely for manipulating pictures (eg removing red eye from a photo), although these tools are also provided by the better graphics packages.
Another way to get the picture on to the screen is to use a picture that has already been done for you. It is placed in a device called a scanner which then looks (ie scans) across and down the page digitising the document. Because it takes a snapshot of what it sees any type of document can be digitised in this way whether it is text (eg a newspaper or magazine article) or an actual picture. Digital cameras can be used instead of a scanner since they also take a snapshot of the document. There are various types of scanners and these and their uses are discussed as part of the scanning section.
If the item you want in the computer is a series of images that form a movie
then it is impractical to use a scanner to transfer them. Instead some extra
hardware is required in the form of a video capture card. Of course, you can
make your own cartoon movie or animation from a series of drawings. This will
require special software to put the images together.
Yet another way of getting an image is to use a digital camera. An image can be taken of a view, person, document etc and then transferred directly from the camera to the computer. A cable connects the camera to the computer. The connection is a serial connection. Early models used a serial port but USB has gained ground. This is faster than the standard serial port and offers greater versatility.
Scanning File Formats File formats 2 Drawing Colour
Contents Music Wordprocessing Databases Spreadsheets Graphics Education Glossary Contact Bibliography/links