Thursday 22 May 2008

M1 comparing limitations of hardware and software

Compare the limitations of at least two different hardware devices and two different software packages utilised for capture, manipulation and storage of graphics (M1)

Processor

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core Processor(3.0GHz,6MB Cache,1333MHz)
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9450 Quad Core Processor(2.66GHz,12MB Cache,1333MHz)

Processors are important for multi-tasking. In a graphics computer the processors need to have advanced performance to be able to carry out lots of jobs when manipulating and editing graphics. The dual core processor will carry out graphics manipulation tasks well, because it has two cores and it has a good speed. The quad core has 4 processors which will have twice the amount of speed than the dual core and you can use a broader range of applications at the same time with this processor and there is double the amount of Cache memory. Any processors would be ok for graphics manipulation.

RAM

512MB DDR2 Memory - 667MHz
2GB DDR2 Memory - 667MHz

A computer working with graphics needs quite a large amount of RAM to run all the applications and graphic image sizes are often large so the for a better performance computer it is best to have 2GB when working with programs such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. 512MB is not suitable for a graphics computer because it would slow down the computer, cause it to crash more often and 512 MB is ok for the manipulation of graphics on Paint and Visio which doesn't deal with major details in images. 2 GB is more suitable than 512 MB in today's evolving computers.


Photoshop Elements and Paint

Photoshop is a popular program used for graphics manipulation and it specialises in graphic design. There are many tools that can be used in Photoshop such as the magic wand, hue/contrast/saturation/brightening/lightening and other colours manipulation techniques, layering of images, lasso tool, sharpen/blur and many other effects. These are all modern ways to manipulate graphics and these tools have been developed rapidly to be as good as they can. Photoshop stores images that become very large files which may cause inconvenience when uploading to the internet and many detailed images will take up hard drive space. Paint is a basic graphics manipulation program which allows you to crop, resize, draw shapes and add text to images (you can do all this on Photoshop), the files are normally save as a Jpeg or GIF so they are not large files. Photoshop or a similar program (Paint Shop Pro) is definately needed when working with graphics on a computer, it can cost a lot of money but it is a lot better than Paint.