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The document discusses different types of text editing, painting, drawing, 3D modeling, animation and image editing tools that are useful for creating multimedia projects. It provides details on common features and capabilities of word processors, painting software, drawing software, 3D modeling tools and image editing applications.

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naackrmu2023
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22 views

Authoring Tools

The document discusses different types of text editing, painting, drawing, 3D modeling, animation and image editing tools that are useful for creating multimedia projects. It provides details on common features and capabilities of word processors, painting software, drawing software, 3D modeling tools and image editing applications.

Uploaded by

naackrmu2023
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Text Editing and Word Processing Tools

A word processor is usually the first software tool computer users learn. From letters, invoices, and storyboards
to project content, your word processor may also be your most often used tool, as you design and build a
multimedia project.

Word processor comes bundled in an office suite that might include spreadsheet, database, e-mail, web browser,
and presentation applications.

Word processors such as Microsoft Word and WordPerfect are powerful applications that include spell checkers,
table formatters, thesauruses, and prebuilt templates for letters, résumés, purchase orders, and other common
documents.

Painting and Drawing Tools


Painting and drawing tools, as well as 3-D modelers, are perhaps the most important items in your toolkit
because, of all the multimedia elements, the graphical impact of your project will likely have the greatest
influence on the end user.

Painting software, such as Photoshop, Fireworks, and Painter, is dedicated to producing crafted bitmap images.
Drawing software, such as CorelDraw, FreeHand, Illustrator, Designer, and Canvas, is dedicated to producing
vector-based line art easily printed to paper at high resolution.

Look for these features in a drawing or painting package:


■ An intuitive graphical user interface with pull-down menus, status bars, palette control, and dialog boxes for
quick, logical selection
■ Scalable dimensions, so that you can resize, stretch, and distort both large and small bitmaps
■ Paint tools to create geometric shapes, from squares to circles and from curves to complex polygons
■ The ability to pour a color, pattern, or gradient into any area
■ The ability to paint with patterns and clip art
■ Customizable pen and brush shapes and sizes
■ An eyedropper tool that samples colors An autotrace tool that turns bitmap shapes into vector-based outlines
■ Support for scalable text fonts and drop shadows
■ Multiple undo capabilities, to let you try again
■ A history function for redoing effects, drawings, and text
■ A property inspector
■ A screen capture facility
■ Painting features such as smoothing coarse-edged objects into the background with anti-aliasing (see
illustration); airbrushing in variable sizes, shapes, densities, and patterns; washing colors in gradients; blending;
and masking.
■ Support for third-party special-effect plug-ins
■ Object and layering capabilities that allow you to treat separate elements independently
■ Zooming, for magnified pixel editing
■ All common color depths: 1-, 4-, 8-, and 16-, 24-, or 32-bit color, and gray-scale
■ Good color management and dithering capability among color depths using various color models such as
RGB, HSB, and CMYK
■ Good palette management when in 8-bit mode
■ Good file importing and exporting capability for image formats such as PIC, GIF, TGA, TIF, PNG, WMF, JPG,
PCX, EPS, PTN, and BMP
3-D Modeling and Animation Tools
3-D modeling software has increasingly entered the mainstream of graphic design as its ease of use improves.
As a result, the graphic production values and expectations for multimedia projects have risen. 3-D is an
abbreviation for “three dimensions.” While in a 2-D graphics program, images are painted in the “x” (horizontal or
width) and “y” (vertical or height) axes, in 3-D depth is labeled as the “z” axis. Every program that layers objects
on the screen must know each object’s “z” axis. Web browsers, for example, place objects on the screen using
the CSS “z-index” attribute. Some software programs (such as Flash CS4 and ToonBoom Studio) can simulate
depth by automatically scaling images based on a z-axis value to create a cartoonish or simulated 3-D effect.
This differs from true 3-D modeling and rendering, where objects can be rotated and viewed from any direction
or angle.

A good 3-D modeling tool should include the following features:


■ Multiple windows that allow you to view your model in each dimension, from the camera’s perspective, and in a
rendered preview
■ The ability to drag and drop primitive shapes into a scene
■ The ability to create and sculpt organic objects from scratch
■ Lathe and extrude features Color and texture mapping
■ The ability to add realistic effects such as transparency, shadowing, and fog
■ The ability to add spot, local, and global lights, to place them anywhere, and manipulate them for special
lighting effects
■ Unlimited cameras with focal length control
■ The ability to draw spline-based paths for animation

Image-Editing Tools
Image-editing applications are specialized and powerful tools for creating, enhancing, and retouching existing
bitmapped images. These applications also provide many of the features and tools of painting and drawing
programs and can be used to create images from scratch as well as images digitized from scanners, video
frame-grabbers, digital cameras, clip art files, or original artwork files created with a painting or drawing package.
Multiple windows that provide views of more than one image at a time
■ Conversion of major image-data types and industry-standard file formats
■ Direct inputs of images from scanner and video sources
■ Employment of a virtual memory scheme that uses hard disk space as RAM for images that require large
amounts of memory
■ Capable selection tools, such as rectangles, lassos, and magic wands, for selecting portions of a bitmap
■ Image and balance controls for brightness, contrast, and color balance
■ Good masking features
■ Multiple undo and restore features
■ Anti-aliasing capability, and sharpening and smoothing controls
■ Color-mapping controls for precise adjustment of color balance
■ Tools for retouching, blurring, sharpening, lightening, darkening, smudging, and tinting
■ Geometric transformations such as flip, skew, rotate, and distort, and perspective changes
■ The ability to resample and resize an image
■ 24-bit color, 8- or 4-bit indexed color, 8-bit gray-scale, black-andwhite, and customizable color palettes
■ The ability to create images from scratch, using line, rectangle, square, circle, ellipse, polygon, airbrush,
paintbrush, pencil, and eraser toolswith customizable brush shapes and user-definable bucket and gradient fills
■ Multiple typefaces, styles, and sizes, and type manipulation and masking routines
■ Filters for special effects, such as crystallize, dry brush, emboss, facet, fresco, graphic pen, mosaic, pixelize,
poster, ripple, smooth, splatter, stucco, twirl, watercolor, wave, and wind

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