MULTIMEDIA
SOFTWARE
The
types of multimedia software we are going to discuss next are those used for graphics
and image editing, audio and sound editing, video editing, and animation
authoring.
Graphic
and Image Editing
An
image editing software is often distinguished by its array of toolbars, filters
and transformations functions.
Many
of us though probably would have our own collection of favorite images if we
have been taking photographs using the digital or mobile phone camera. With
graphics software programs we now can manipulate our digital images through
resizing, cropping, enhancing, or transforming them.
There
are a few digital images editing software that you can download free from the
internet. Their image editing tools maybe fewer than that provided by the commercial
ones but they are useful enough for amateur image editors. Examples of the more
popular commercial ones are Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Visualizes, Photo
Studio, and Corel Photo-Paint. Adobe Photoshop is claimed by Adobe Systems as
the industry standard for graphics professionals.
The
following list indicates what image editing tools such as Photoshop can do:
(a)
Merge images;
(b)
Alter image size;
(c)
Crop image;
(d)
Adjust colours;
(e)
Remove unwanted elements;
(f)
Orientate image (change direction);
(g)
Sharpen and soften image;
(h)
Contrast change and brighten image;
(i)
Add text onto image.
Audio
and Sound Editing
An
audio
software use for editing in the sound frequency also provides the cropping,
mixing, editing etc.
In
the 90s the only popular audio wave file editor was the Sound Designer. Today,
the most popular audio editing programs are Sony Sound Forge, Audacity and
Adobe Audition.
Sony
Sound Forge (known formerly as Sonic Foundry Sound Forge) is a digital audio
editing software for the professional as well as amateur or non professional
user. Sound Forge lets us create a stunning audio clip with various sound
effects such as fading, echo, etc. from raw audio files.
Video
Editing
Digital
video brings the power to our multimedia presentation or project. With video
editing software, we can create our own original and unique movies for our
personal or business purposes. Examples of video editor software that we may
choose from are Avid's Media Composer and Xpress Pro, Apple's Final Cut
Pro
and Adobe's Premiere. Building a complex multimedia package such as a video
clip is a challenging problem. We have to be careful because video editing involves
dual tracks of audio and video. Therefore we need to make sure that the audio
and video are synchronized.
Animation
Authoring
As
more and more Flash movies are created, delivered, and viewed by over millions
of Internet users, Flash has emerged as the main online animation format (Yang,
Li, Wenyin & Zhuang, 2007). Since its introduction in 1996, the phenomenal
growth of online Flash movies has made Flash more and more
popular
on the Web. Do you know that the first version of Flash was Flash version 1.0? We
can use Flash to create simple animation, advertisements, or even online banners
for our personal homepage or web log (blog). We can even embed or integrate
flash video into our web pages.
