1. Multimedia Software Tools

2. 3-D Modeling and Animation Tools 3-D modeling gives images a 3-dimensional look. It can be used along with animation, for instance, to create a smooth movement through a group of objects. 3-D modeling software has increasingly entered the mainstream of graphic design as it has become easier to use and as PCs have become powerful enough to run it. 3-D modeling packages are usually Object-Oriented. Larger objects are built up from smaller objects which can be manipulated A scene is designed by positioning the objects over the background. Surfaces of objects may be changed using texture mapping (whereby a bitmap, spread over the surface of an object).

3. 3-D Modeling and Animation Tools Examples of 3-D modeling packages are: Macromedia’s Extreme 3D Autodesk’s 3D Studio. These packages are also bundled with assortments pre-entered 3-D clip art objects such as people, furniture, buildings, cars, airplanes, trees, and plants.

4. 3-D Modeling and Animation Tools 3-D modeling tools include the following features: Color and texture mapping Ability to drag and drop primitive shapes into a scene Lathe and extrude features Multiple windows that allow you to view the model in each dimension

5. Image Editing Tools Image editing applications are specialized and powerful tools for enhancing and re-touching existing bitmapped images. These applications provide many of the features and tools associated with painting and drawing programs. They can be used to create images from scratch as well as to edit images digitized from scanners, video frame- grabbers, digital cameras, clip art files, or original art work files created with painting or drawing packages.

6. Image Editing Tools The following features should be available in image editing packages: Conversion of major image-data types and industry- standard file formats Image and balance controls for brightness, contrast, and color balance Flip, skew, rotate, distort and perspective changes Multiple windows, which provide views of more than on image at a time Ability to re-sample and resize an image Tools for touching, blurring, sharpening, lightening, darkening, smudging and tinting.

7. Sound Editing Tools Sound editing tools display a representation of sound as a score or waveform. These images can be cut, copied and pasted very precisely and thus create artificial combination of sounds which are not possible in ‘live’ recording. Sound recorder, which included in Windows system, offers basic sound editing features although more powerful editing software is included with PC sound cards. There are also sound editing tools available for the Apple Macintosh (e.g. SoundEdit 16 or Sound Designer II)

8. Animation Tools Visual effects such as wipes, fades, zooms and dissolves are available in most authoring systems. There are also inexpensive but powerful tools that can manipulate 3-D text. Morphing – is an animation technique that can dynamically combine two still images. It is used to create a sequence of pictures (or frames) between them When played back, the effect of one image metamorphosing into another is created.

9. Tools for Video and Digital Movies These tools allow the creation, editing and presentation of digitized moving video. Tools such as Premiere and VideoShop enable the editing and assembling of video clips captured from a range of sources (such as tape, cameras scanned images etc.). The assembled clip (which may include special effects such as transitions) can be played back in sequences, although often only within a small windows on the screen. QuickTime and Video for Windows are two common tools for storing digitized video onto, and playing it back from disk files.

10. Tools for Video and Digital Movies QuickTime Originated from Apple and provides facilities for the creation, compression, viewing, control and editing of QuickTime movie files in a consistent fashion across a range of applications. It comprises a system software extension, a set of compression algorithms, a standard file format, ‘the movie’, and a standard human computer interface.

11. Presentation Software Presentation software was originally devised to create and produce overhead transparencies. As computer based projection technologies developed, the images were used to directly project the created images from the computer. As the power of these presentation tools increases, and they increasingly support multimedia formats of sound and moving video, they are providing a low- cost alternative to professional authoring software. The most pervasive example of presentation software is PowerPoint which is available for both Windows PCs and the Apple Macintosh.