Graphics software
There are three main types of graphics software:
- photo-editing
- painting
- drawing
Some of the basic changes they let you make to an image include:
- The difference between lightness and darkness. An image with high contrast has very light (white) areas and very dark (black) areas. An image with low contrast is more grey. and brightness adjustment
- rotation
- cropping (choosing part of the image and getting rid of the rest)
- resizing
Photo editing
Photo-editing software is used to edit photos taken with a digital camera or scanned and saved to your computer.
Airbrushing is a technique that features in photo-editing software. It is used by newspapers and magazines, sometimes to cover up skin imperfections, to change eye colour and to make people look slimmer.
Painting
Painting software can create and edit bitmap images. A bitmap is an image made up of individual dots called pixels. Bitmap images lose quality when their size is increased. If you increase the size enough, the image looks as if it is made up of little squares. These are pixels.
Files with the extensions .bmp, .jpg and .gif are bitmap files.
Drawing
Drawing software creates and edits vector images. Vector images are made up of lines, curves and shapes based on coordinates. An enlarged vector image will not lose quality.
