Image Capture, Optimisation and Storage

Image Capture, Optimisation and Storage

What is a scanner?

A scanner is a device that captures images from prints, magazines, posters and other sources for editing and display via a computer. Scanners can come in many forms, you have feed in scanners, flatbed scanners are used for scanning black and white only or colour. High resolution scanners are used for scanning high resolution printing. Lower resolution scanners are good for capturing images for a simple computer display. Scanners come usually with Adobe Photoshop product that will let you resize and modify a captured image.

How does it work?

Document scanners have a glass plate and a cover, there is also a lamp used to illuminate the document. The scanner moves a mirror, reflecting the light across the document. The light is picked up by a simple CCD camera chip and digitizes the data line by line, like a slow scan TV. Scanners have become an important part of the home office over the last few years. Scanner technology is everywhere and used in many ways: Flatbed scanners, also called desktop scanners are the most common scanners.

Key Features of a Scanner

The key features of a scanner is as followed; the type of feeder – Flatbed General purpose single page scanner, or automatic document feeder that is used for scanning manuals and books and works faster than normal flatbed scanners.

Software compatibility – One key feature of a scanner is the type of software it requires to operate and whether or not that it is compatible with your particular computer. It is important to identify if the specific drives needed to make the scanner work with your computer are included with the scanner itself. Without the specific drives the scanner will all be but useless.

Resolution – The colour depth of a scanner is important because it determines the quality of the scanned images, this is usually measured in DPI (dots per inch) the higher the dpi number a scanner holds the better the image will look when scanned.

Size of a scanned image – Flatbed scanners can handle up to legal size paper which is 8.5 x 14”. If someone needs to scan larger images, then they will need to upgrade to a large format flatbed scanner.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths and weaknesses can also be advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of using scanners are that it can copy images onto computers, without a scanner it is difficult to accomplish this. They can also alter things you have copied this can be good and bad as when you scan in an image it may turn out the way you wanted it to but on some cases it may look completely different or not how you wanted it. Flatbed scanners are accurate and produce high quality images, any image which is digitised by a scanner can be then included on electronic document images and once digitised it can be altered with any graphics application. 

Disadvantages are that images can take up a lot of memory spaces, images can lose the quality which you mainly wanted when scanning the image in, and that a scan can completely depend on the quality of the original image. If the original image is bad quality then the scanned image isn’t going to look any different or it may look even worse.

What is a digital camera?

The simple definition of a digital camera is a special up to date camera that takes video or still photographs, it can also record videos or footage and can be hooked up to a computer/laptop, the photo or video can then be altered on your device.

How does a digital camera work?

The camera’s sensor is covered with tiny light sensitive cells, each of which can measure the amount of light that falls on it. The cells act like the old photosensitive film, reacting to the light which falls on them and then reporting to the camera’s microprocessor brain. The camera doesn’t just look at an individual pixel on the sensor; it also looks at the pixels around it to come up with an informed guess of what the true colour of that pixel is.

What different types of digital cameras are there and what are they used for?

There are many different types of digital cameras, they come in a wide range of sizes, prices and compatibilities. You can have your normal common home style digital camera or you can even have specialized cameras which include multispectral imaging equipment and cameras used in the military, scientific purposes, medical purposes and ones purposely used for digital photography.

Compact digital cameras are your usual common camera, they are used for portable uses like the casual snapshot. These come with optical zoom, the auto actuating lens cover protects the lens from outside elements. In 2011, some compact cameras can take still 3D images, these 3D compact stereo cameras can capture 3D panoramic photos for play back on a 3D TV.

Digital single-lens reflex cameras use a mirror to direct light from the lens through a separate optical viewfinder. These cameras have much larger sensors than any other type of digital cameras, this gives them superior performance, less depth of field at a given aperture and a larger size. This type of camera are used for professional still photographer.

Key features of digital cameras

Sensor Quality – A sensor is a solid state device which captures the light required to form a digital image. The process used in sensor quality creates millions of tiny pixels, in each pixel there will be light sensitive element which can sense how many photons have arrived at that particular location. More pixels can mean more detail, but the size of the sensor is crucial.

Megapixels – More megapixels tend to mean that your camera is better, the most important thing is cropping. If you crop the image slightly, it may look a lot better than if you left it alone. This is the main advantage of having a camera with more megapixels. It gives you a little extra room to mess around with when you are cropping your photos. When you print your images, you will need more megapixels. If your megapixel count isn’t enough for the size of image you print, your images won’t look sharp.

Zoom – Digital zoom is a method of decreasing the angle of view of a digital photo or video image. Every digital camera has a zoom, this is great as if you want to see an image closer then this helps dramatically, and some digital cameras rely heavily on digital zoom, lacking a real zoom lens, as on most camera phones.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Advantages – The photos are more versatile, you can easily upload them to your computer/laptop which gives you the ability to burn them onto a CD or DVD to archive them. Email them to friends and family. Upload them to internet sites such as Kodak.com and other websites to then create things such as calendars, photobooks, mugs, shirts, greeting cards etc… You can easily crop, zoom and edit photos, you can change colour photos to black and whites.

Disadvantages – The size of a digital image can be large and it won’t be long before your designated storage space fills up. It is vital to pay attention to the image while using a digital camera as they are sensitive to heat, extreme cold and moisture in comparison to the old film cameras. A digital camera is susceptible to extreme conditions that may cause malfunction. Battery consumption is much faster in case of digital cameras. This makes it necessary to keep a few spare batteries just in case.

What is a Graphics Tablet?

A graphics tablet is an input device used by artists to allow them to draw a picture onto a computer screen without having to use a mouse or keyboard. It consists of a flat, touch-sensitive pad and some sort of drawing stylus. The tablet is most suited for artists and those who want the natural feel of a pen-like object to manipulate the cursor on their screen.

How does a Graphics Tablet work?

Graphics tablets are input devices not unlike a keyboard or a mouse. Instead of translating typing or clicking, the tablet becomes a digital page or canvas upon which one can draw, as if drawing on paper with a pencil. The tablets capture the image as data which can be stored as a file or document. Graphics tablets can be used like a large marker board to take notes on or create outlines during a conference or lecture event where the images are viewed by the audience or they can be used by individuals as drawing surfaces.

Advantages, Disadvantages & Key Features

Advantages

• A benefit for graphics artists
• More effective than mouse input
• Can come in different sizes
• Natural to use for anyone familiar with a pen

·         Can record levels of pressure unlike other point and click devices

Disadvantages

• Slower then paper drawing
• Can be awkward to access menus and make selections
• Larger designs (A4 for example) are expensive

What is digital graphics optimisation and the different ways it can be optimised?

Optimisation is making the best or most effective use of something and in Digital Graphics it is no different, as there are many ways in optimising your digital graphics.

Target Image Output - The image output is important, if you want to present a presentation, you don't need high quality pictures but you do need a good quality.

Image Bit Depth - Image bit depth is the number of bits used to represent the colour of a single pixel in a raster file image. There is a 1 bit monochrome, 8 bit gray scale, 8 bit colour, 16 bit colour (high colour), 24 bit (true colour) and 48 bit colour (deep colour).

Compression - There are two types of compression these are; lossy and loss less.
Lossy images remove some data and lose some quality of the image, some of the images information may be lost permanently with this method of compression.
Loss less compression will change the way in which the file is stored to reduce file size. Loss less compression also makes no visible alterations to the image. 

These optimisations improve its usage by reducing file size so it's easier to store your files, it can make your image clearer and makes no alterations at all to the original image.

What is Asset Management Software?

Software asset management is a business practice that involves managing and optimizing the purchase of software application within a company. Its uses in financial aspects are as followed;

Know driving returns on investments, Cash shortfalls, deferred payments, leverage costs etc... Calculate different leverage options and Analysing the effects on these returns.

Benefits to artists

Digital Asset Management consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets, Digital Photographs, animations, videos and music. This asset management is great for digital artists as they can keep track of their assets and know that nothing will happen to their assets while under the protection of the (DAM).