Module 4 - SLP Computer Software Trends



Module 4 - SLP Computer Software Trends

Introduction

A basic understanding of computer tells us that it can store any type of information in the form of bits as any computer storage can store only in the form of bits i.e. 0's and 1's.The way in which the information is encoded in a computer file is called a file format. We are going to look at commonly used audio/video and image file types and discuss briefly about them.

Difference between the Existing Image, Audio and Video Formats

The three most common image file formats, the most important for printing, scanning and internet use, are JPG, TIF, and GIF.

Digital cameras normally use JPG files - compresses smaller, to not fill the memory cards, but JPG uses lossy compression, and image quality can suffer.

TIF is lossless (including LZW compression), and is considered the high quality format for commerical work. Internet browsers and web pages cannot show TIF files, nor can they show RAW files from DSLR cameras(Software Basic, 1999).

GIF is lossless too, but is the older format, the first one for images on the internet. GIF is an indexed file (256 colors maximum), NOT best for photos today, still good for web graphics, but PNG is its replacement today(Oak, 2011).

JPG is 24 bit color only. GIF is 8 bit indexed only. PNG and TIF can be anything, whatever you have, 1 bit to 48 bit color.

All photo editor programs like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Elements support these file formats, which will generally support and store images in the following color modes:

Best file types for these general purposes:

These are not the only choices, but they are good and reasonable choices.

Web pages require JPG or GIF or PNG image types, because that is all that browsers can show. On the web, JPG is the best choice (smallest file, with quality being less important than size) for photo images, and GIF is common for graphic images. GIF was designed for modems by CompuServe, for earliest 8 bit video, and so GIF contains no printing dpi information, and is out of date for 24 bit photos now, but GIF still works quite well for video graphics on the internet (Software Basic, 1999). Other than the web, TIF file format is the undisputed leader when best quality is required (when less than maximum quality is not a consideration). So TIF is very common in commercial ...