HA2 Task 1 - Technical Glossary

Pixel and Resolution

Pixels are little squares/rectangles that, when enough of them are together, form an image on a computer screen. Resolution is the quality of an image, for example an image of a TV show would have better resolution than a image made using paint.

Vector and Raster Images



Raster images are created on programs like paint and Photo-shop. Photo-shop has a variety of tools at hand but the quality of the images isn't too good, the images will always have rough edges and look pixelated. Vector images can be made on illustrator. The program lets the user make smoother lines in which Photo-shop won't. Illustrator is better for more detailed images like portraits of people.

File Formats and Uses

BMP File: The BMP file format, also known as bitmap image file or device independent bitmap  file format or simply a bitmap, is a raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images, independently of the display device.

PNG File: Portable Network Graphics is a raster graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was created as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format, and is the most used lossless image compression format on the Internet.

GIF File: The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability. The format supports up to 8 bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colours chosen from the 24-bit RGB colour space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of up to 256 colours for each frame. These palette limitations make the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing colour photographs and other images with continuous colour, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of colour.

TIFF File: TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a file format for storing images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and both amateur and professional photographers in general. As of 2009, it is under the control of Adobe Systems. Originally created by the company Aldus for use with "desktop publishing", the TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page layout applications, and by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications.

JPG File: JPG is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital photography (i.e. images). The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable trade-off between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality, and is the file type most often produced in digital photography.

PSD File: PSD file is a layered image file used in Adobe PhotoShop. PSD, which stands for Photoshop Document, is the default format that Photoshop uses for saving data.  PSD is a proprietary file that allows the user to work with the images’ individual layers even after the file has been saved.  When an image is complete, Photoshop allows the user to flatten the layers and convert the flat image into a .JPG, .GIF, .TIFF or other non-proprietary file format so it can be shared.

PDF File: PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format used to represent documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating system. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout flat document, including the text, fonts, graphics, and other information needed to display it.

EPS File: EPS (Encapsulated PostScript ) is a DSC-conforming PostScript document with additional restrictions which is intended to be usable as a graphics file format. In other words, EPS files are more-or-less self-contained, reasonably predictable PostScript documents that describe an image or drawing and can be placed within another PostScript document.

AI File: AI (Adobe Illustrator Artwork) is a proprietary file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing single-page vector-based drawings in either the EPS or PDF formats. The .ai filename extension is used by Adobe Illustrator. Early versions of the AI file format are true EPS files with a restricted, compact syntax, with additional semantics represented by Illustrator-specific DSC comments that conform to DSC's Open Structuring Conventions.

Compression
Lossless data compression algorithms usually exploit statistical redundancy to represent data more concisely without losing information. Lossless compression is possible because most real world data has statistical redundancy. For example, an image may have areas of colour that do not change over several pixels; instead of coding "red pixel, red pixel, ..." the data may be encoded as "279 red pixels". This is the basic example of run-length encoding; there are many schemes to reduce file size by eliminating redundancy.

Te Lempel-Ziv (LZ) compression methods are among the most popular algorithms for lossless storage. DEFLATE is a variation on LZ optimized for decompression speed and compression ratio, but compression can be slow. DEFLATE is used in PKZIP, Gzip and PNG. LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Renau) is used in GIF images.

Image Capture Devices

Tablets: Front: 1.2 MP, 720p HD
Rear: 1.2 MP, 720p HD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface

iPads: Front: Video recording, VGA up to 30 frame/s with audio, VGA-quality still camera, 0.3 MP.
Back: Video recording, 1280x720 up to 30 frame/s with audio, 960×720 still camera with 5× digital zoom, 0.7 MP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_2

Phones: Front camera: 2.2 MP (1080p video recording)
Rear camera 13.1 MP back-side illuminated sensor with LED flash

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Xperia_Z

Scanners: 

• Resolution: 9600 x 9600 color, 48-bit color depth

http://reviews.productwiki.com/canon-canoscan-lide-700f/

Cameras: 5760 × 3840 (22.1 megapixels)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EOS_5D_Mark_III


Optimizing

Optimizing is what you do to increase the computing speed and efficiency of (a program), as by rewriting instructions.

Storage and Asset Management

Digital asset management (DAM) consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets. Digital photographs, animations, videos and music exemplify the target areas of media asset management (a sub-category of DAM). Digital asset management systems (DAMS) include computer software and hardware systems that aid in the process of digital asset management.
The term "digital asset management" (DAM) also refers to the protocol for downloading, renaming, backing up, rating, grouping, archiving, optimizing, maintaining, thinning, and exporting files. The "media asset management" (MAM) sub-category of digital asset management mainly[quantify] addresses audio, video and other media content. The more recent[when?] concept of enterprise content management (ECM) often deals with solutions which address similar features but in a wider range of industries or applications.