GraphicsLesson 3

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

Define graphics; Give examples of graphics; Compare bitmap image to a vector image; and Save images from the web.

Objectives

What are graphics?

How do you save images from the Internet?

Do you know…

A graphic or graphical image refers to digital images, such as drawings, charts, or photographs.Graphics help create a mood, establish a visual style, and convey messages. Graphs, charts, and diagrams are good for putting across complex and detailed information, while photographs and illustrations are good at implying a feeling or style. Many individuals find numerical information easier to understand when placed in a chart or graph form. Photographs convey a sense of realism. Artistically treated photographs and illustrations can imply a mood or impression.

Let’s find out!

The web contains countless images about a variety of subjects. You can download many of these images at no cost and use them for non-commercial purposes. For example, you can add images into greeting cards, projects, and other documents.

Some websites use thumbnails on their pages because graphics can be time-consuming to display. A thumbnail is a small version of a larger graphic. You usually click a thumbnail to display a larger image.

Examples of graphics

Most images on the web come in two file

formats: JPEG or GIF. JPEG, which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, is a format that compresses graphics to reduce their file size, which means the files takes up less storage space. Smaller file sizes result in faster downloading of the web pages because small files transmit faster than large file. All images under this format have file extension of .jpg.

GIF stands for Graphic Interchange

Format. All images under this format have the file extension of .gif. This format is the most commonly used image format on the web and includes features that enable background transparency and animation.

There are many images on the web that

you can use in your own web pages, presentations, documents, and research pares. You can save these images individually in your own computer. You can create a separate directory for all your images and call it something like Download and then create a subdirectory called Images. This way you know where all the images that you have downloaded from the web.

Saving Images from the Web

Place your cursor over the graphic. Click your right mouse button. A pop-up box

appears. Select the place where you want to save the

image and the click Save. You can accept the current file name or

rename the file.

To save an image:

Application software often include a clip art/ image gallery which is a collection of clip arts and photographs. Some applications have links to additional clips available on the web. You can also purchase clip art/image gallery software that contain thousands of images.In addition to clip art, many clip art/image galleries provide fonts, animations, sounds, video clips, and audio clips. You can use the images, font s and other items from the clip art/image gallery in all types of documents, including word processing, desktop publishing, spreadsheet, and graphics presentation.

Clip Art/ Image Gallery

Examples of Clip Art/Image Gallery

Screen capture involves, as the name

suggests, capturing the image of the entire screen. To do this, simply press the Print Screen button on the key board. You will then paste the copied screen into the application of your choice, as such in a word document or in a presentation.

Making Screen Captures

Everywhere you look, people are capturing

moments they want to remember. They take pictures of their birthday parties, weddings, and other activities. Because of the popularity of digital cameras, increasingly more people want to capture their moments digitally, instead of on film.

Digital Photography

With digital technology, you have the ability to

modify and share the digital images you create. You can also copy, manipulate, print, and distribute digital images using your personal computer and the Internet.

With digital cameras, no developing is needed. Instead, the images are stored media, such as a hard disk, DVD, or flash memory card. Unlike film, storage media can be reused, which reduces cost, saves time, and provides immediate results.

Digital technology allows greater control

over the creative process. You can check results immediately after capturing a picture to determine whether it meets your expectations. If you are dissatisfied with the picture, you can erase it and recapture it, again and again.

One popular type of image editing

software, called photo editing software, allows users to edit digital photographs by erasing blemishes, restoring old photographs, adjusting or enhancing image colors, and adding special effects, such as shadows and glows, or creating electronic photo albums. You can print edited photographs on paper or post them on the web.

Graphic artists, multimedia professionals, technical

illustrators, and desktop publishers use paint software and image editing software to create and modify graphical images, such as those used in publishing documents and web pages. Paint software, also called illustration software, allow users to draw pictures, shapes, and other graphical images with various onscreen tools, such as pen, brush, eyedropper, and paint bucket. These product also include many templates to assist you in adding an image to documents, such as greeting cards, banners, calendars, signs, labels, and business cards.

Paint/Draw Software

The graphics that you see in multimedia programs and many that you see in print have been created or manipulated in a computer in a digital format. There are two basic formats of computer graphics: Bitmap or Vector

KINDS OF GRAPHICS

A bitmap graphic is a piece of art that has been stored as a pattern of dots called pixels. A pixel, short for picture element, is one dot in a grid. A picture that s produced on the computer screen or on paper by a printer is composed of thousands of these dots. Just as a bit is the smallest unit of information a computer can process, a pixel is the smallest element that can display or that print hardware and software can manipulate in creating letters, numbers, or graphics. For example, a letter A shown here is actually made up of a pattern of pixels in a grid.

Bitmap Graphics

Bitmap graphics can also be produced

from digitizing art, pictures, or photographs, by passing the artwork through a scanner. A scanner is a hardware device that converts line and shading into combinations of the binary digits 0 and 1 by sensing different intensities of light and dark. The scanner shines a beam of light on the picture being scanned. The beam passes back and forth across the picture. Scanned pictures are bitmap pictures and have jagged edges.

The jagged edges are caused by the individual pixels that create the picture. Bitmap graphics are also known as raster images. Additionally, bitmap files cannot be ungrouped into smaller object groups.

Bitmap graphics are defined by their dimensions in pixels, as well as by the number of colors they represent. For example, a 640 x 480 image contains 640 pixels horizontally and 480 pixels vertically. If you enlarge a small area of a bitmap image, you can clearly see the pixels that are used to create it. When viewed normally, the small pixels merge into Using 24-bit color, each pixel can be set to any of the 16 million colors. Bitmap graphics have .bmp as file extensions.

A vector graphic is a piece of art that has

been created by a drawing program, such as CorelDRAW or AutoCAD. Vector graphics are widely used in computer/aided design (CAD) programs to create detailed engineering and design drawings that have become popular in multimedia.

Vector Graphics

Vector graphic objects are created as a

collections of lines instead of patterns of individual pixels. Vector graphic files store data either as picture descriptions or as calculations. These files describe a picture mathematically as a set of instructions for creating the objects in the picture. These mathematical descriptions determine the position, length, and direction in which the are to be drawn.

These calculations allow the drawing

program to re-create the picture on the screen. Because vector graphic objects are described mathematically, they can be layered, rotated, and magnified easily. Vector graphics are also known as object oriented pictures. Clip art pictures in the Microsoft Clip Gallery that have the file extension .wmf are examples of v vector files. Vector files can be ungrouped and manipulated by their component objects.

Vector graphics retain their quality when enlarged, while

bitmaps do not. Look at the illustrations below.

Vector Circle

Bitmap Circle

What are graphics?

How do you save images from the Internet?

Any answers?

A graphic or graphical image refers to digital images, such as drawings, charts, or photographs.

Place your cursor over the graphic. Then click your right mouse button. A pop-up box appears, select the place where you want to save the image and the click Save. You can accept the current file name or rename the file.

That is why we are using a

PowerPoint.