The range of pictures, drawings and images which can be produced by a computer are called graphics. The main types of graphics packages are painting, drawing, photo editing and CAD. There may be some cross over between the packages, ie certain packages may be suitable for more than one task.
Painting packages
A painting applicationapplication: applications serve a specific purpose, eg Microsoft Word is used for word processing allows freehand drawing and colouring, usually with a mouse. Generally the features are:
- a palette from which the user can choose colours
- freehand pens and brushes offering different styles and line thickness
- a range of standard shape tools such as rectangles and circles
- colour fill tools
- spray cans and eraser tools
- cut, copy and paste
- zoom (to work in finer detail)
Bitmap graphics
Bitmap graphics made with painting packages consist of many tiny dots called pixels. It is possible to edit each individual pixel.
Since the computer has to store information about every single pixel (the colour for example) in the image, the file size of a bitmap graphic is often quite large. Bitmap graphics lose quality when they're resized.
To resize the bitmap graphic below drag the slider from left to right or click the righthand magnifying glass.
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