M1 compare the limitations of at least two different hardware devices and two different software packages utilised for the capture, manipulation and s

Firstly i am going to compare two software packages, these being photoshop and paint. Photoshop is an extremely in-depth graphics utility.

It is used professionally by graphics designers worldwide. The possibilities with photoshop are fairly endless and pretty much any image can be edited. Images can be edited in a number of different ways, these include colour correction, special effects, lighting, and background changes.

Lasso tools and magic wand tools can be used to cut out images so they can be placed elsewhere, these go on colour so certain bits of images that are the same colour can be cut out. Layers are also present in photoshop, this allows the user to place different parts of images on the same canvas.

One limitation of photoshop is that it is difficult to learn, some of the tools are complex.

Another limitation of photoshop is that images need to be rasterized to be altered and changed

Photoshop can also be used to export images to different adobe programs such as fireworks. For example, a graphics designer creates images on photoshop, he then exports the bmp files to fireworks so they can be animated. Resizing and compression can also all be done within photoshop.

Comparing photoshop with paint is extremely easy. Paint is a very simple program, the amount of features do not even compare to the vast quanitity of photoshop.

The idea of paint is for simple editing, such as cropping and resizing. No special effects can be used, and it isn't a professional program. Paint is a free utility that is free with any edition of windows. There are no complex tools within paint only simple drawing tools such as pen, paint, spray and a different array of colours.

In paint you can save files as BMP, JPEGS, PNG's and GIFS.

Another limitation of Paint is that it doesnt include layers, this means everything is drawn on the same canvas with and cannot be split into sections.


512RAM VS 1024 RAM

I am now going to compare having 512 ram in a system and then a system in 1024 ram. The difference between the two is quite profound. The computer with the 512 ram would run quite slow compared to the other, images would take longer to load and render and some of the tools would take longer to process.

One example of this is the magic wand tool, this would take longer to work than the computer with 1024 ram. 512 ram is not really suitable for a graphics design computer using a complex program. Aside from this though, it would be fine if the computer was running on paint instead of photoshop.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core Processor(3.0GHz,6MB Cache,1333MHz) VS
Intel® Core 2 Quad Q9450 Quad Core Processor(2.66GHz,12MB Cache,1333MHz)

The processor is the heart of the computer, it is the component that sorts out all the processes with all programs, thus, is key for graphics design. The duo core has more clock speed per core, but only two as opposed to four cores. There is also double the cache on the quad core. With the more powerful processor, more processes can be used at once. One example is photoshop, with the more powerful processor the tools load quicker and can manipulate the image quicker.

M3 demonstrate the impact that file format, compression techniques, image resolution and colour depth have on file size and image quality

Various different things can impact on image quality. File format, compression techniques, resolution and colour depth can all affect it.

Changing file formats affects the image qualities greatly, changing an bitmap to a jpeg. This is because it sacrifices files size for quality. This is because they are greatly compressed, and easier to post onto certain websites.

Resolutions play a big part of the image quality. In general, the smaller the resolution the worse the actual image looks, for example 640x480 would look less defined and more pixelated than 1200x1086. A lower resolution is easier to save than a higher and is a common form of compression.

The only way of compressing a file size without loosing quality is by cropping and resizing. This generally doesn't doesnt affect what the image looks like, but when the image is blown up in size it will appear pixelated and rendered useless.

Changing colour depth can also be used to compress a file. When this is done, the actual look of the image is changed significantly and generally doesn't look as good.

Basically the bigger the file size the better the image quality will be, any form of compressing will affect the image quality in a negative way.