Multimedia Introduction

Multimedia is an interactive media and provides multiple ways to represent

information to the user in a powerful manner. It provides an interaction
between users and digital information. It is a medium of communication.
Some of the sectors where multimedias is used extensively are education,
training, reference material, business presentations, advertising and
documentaries.

Definition of Multimedia

By definition Multimedia is a representation of information in an attractive and

interactive manner with the use of a combination of text, audio, video,
graphics and animation. In other words, we can say that Multimedia is a
computerized method of presenting information combining textual data, audio,
visuals (video), graphics and animations. For examples: E-Mail, Yahoo
Messenger, Video Conferencing, and Multimedia Message Service (MMS).
Multimedia as name suggests is the combination of Multi and Media that is
many types of media (hardware/software) used for communication of
information.
Components of Multimedia

Following are the common components of multimedia:

• Text- All multimedia productions contain some amount of text. The text
can have various types of fonts and sizes to suit the profession
presentation of the multimedia software.
• Graphics- Graphics make the multimedia application attractive. In
many cases people do not like reading large amount of textual matter
on the screen. Therefore, graphics are used more often than text to
explain a concept, present background information etc.
• Audio- A multimedia application may require the use of speech, music
and sound effects. These are called audio or sound element of
multimedia. Speech is also a perfect way for teaching. Audio are of
analog and digital types. Analog audio or sound refers to the original
sound signal. Computer stores the sound in digital form. Therefore,
the sound used in multimedia application is digital audio.
• Video- The term video refers to the moving picture, accompanied by
sound such as a picture in television. Video element of multimedia
application gives a lot of information in small duration of time. Digital
video is useful in multimedia application for showing real life objects.
Video have highest performance demand on the computer memory
and on the bandwidth if placed on the internet. Digital video files can
be stored like any other files in the computer and the quality of the
video can still be maintained. The digital video files can be transferred
within a computer network. The digital video clips can be edited easily.
 • Animation- Animation is a process of making a static image look like it
is moving. An animation is just a continuous series of still images that
are displayed in a sequence. The animation can be used effectively
for attracting attention. Animation also makes a presentation light and
attractive. Animation is very popular in multimedia application

Applications of Multimedia

Following are the common areas of applications of multimedia.

• Multimedia in Business- Multimedia can be used in many
applications in a business. The multimedia technology along with
communication technology has opened the door for information of
global wok groups. Today the team members may be working
anywhere and can work for various companies. Thus, the work place
will become global. The multimedia network should support the
following facilities:
o Voice Mail
o Electronic Mail
o Multimedia based FAX
o Office Needs
o Employee Training
o Sales and Other types of Group Presentation
o Records Management
• Multimedia in Marketing and Advertising- By using multimedia
marketing of new products can be greatly enhanced. Multimedia boost
communication on an affordable cost opened the way for the
marketing and advertising personnel. Presentation that have flying
banners, video transitions, animations, and sound effects are some of
the elements used in composing a multimedia based advertisement to
appeal to the consumer in a way never used before and promote the
sale of the products.
• Multimedia in Entertainment- By using multimedia marketing of new
products can be greatly enhanced. Multimedia boost communication
on an affordable cost opened the way for the marketing and
advertising personnel. Presentation that have flying banners, video
transitions, animations, and sound effects are some of the elements
used in composing a multimedia based advertisement to appeal to the
consumer in a way never used before and promote the sale of the
products.
• Multimedia in Education- Many computer games with focus on
education are now available. Consider an example of an educational
game which plays various rhymes for kids. The child can paint the
pictures, increase reduce size of various objects etc apart from just
playing the rhymes. Several other multimedia packages are available
in the market which provide a lot of detailed information and playing
capabilities to kids.
• Multimedia in Bank- Bank is another public place where multimedia is
finding more and more application in recent times. People go to bank
to open saving/current accounts, deposit funds, withdraw money,
know various financial schemes of the bank, obtain loans etc. Every
bank has a lot of information which it wants to impart to in customers.
For this purpose, it can use multimedia in many ways. Bank also
displays information about its various schemes on a PC monitor
placed in the rest area for customers. Today on-line and internet
banking have become very popular. These use multimedia extensively.
Multimedia is thus helping banks give service to their customers and
also in educating them about banks attractive finance schemes.
• Multimedia in Hospital- Multimedia best use in hospitals is for real
time monitoring of conditions of patients in critical illness or accident.
The conditions are displayed continuously on a computer screen and
can alert the doctor/nurse on duty if any changes are observed on the
screen. Multimedia makes it possible to consult a surgeon or an
expert who can watch an ongoing surgery line on his PC monitor and
give online advice at any crucial juncture.
In hospitals multimedia can also be used to diagnose an illness with
CD-ROMs/ Cassettes/ DVDs full of multimedia based information
about various diseases and their treatment.Some hospitals
extensively use multimedia presentations in training their junior staff of
doctors and nurses. Multimedia displays are now extensively used
during critical surgeries.
• Multimedia Pedagogues- Pedagogues are useful teaching aids only if
they stimulate and motivate the students. The audio-visual support to
a pedagogue can actually help in doing so. A multimedia tutor can
provide multiple numbers of challenges to the student to stimulate his
interest in a topic. The instruction provided by pedagogue have moved
beyond providing only button level control to intelligent simulations,
dynamic creation of links, composition and collaboration and system
testing of the user interactions.
• Communication Technology and Multimedia Services- The
advancement of high computing abilities, communication ways and
relevant standards has started the beginning of an era where you will
 be provided with multimedia facilities at home. These services may
include:
o Basic Television Services
o Interactive entertainment
o Digital Audio
o Video on demand
o Home shopping
o Financial Transactions
o Interactive multiplayer or single player games
o Digital multimedia libraries
o E-Newspapers, e-magazines

Multimedia Systems

Multimedia Hardware

Most of the computers now-a-days come equipped with the hardware

components required to develop/view multimedia applications. Following are
the various categories in which we can define the various types of hardwares
required for multimedia applications.
• Processor The heart of any multimedia computer is its processor.
Today Core 15 or higher processor is recommended for a multimedia
computer.
o CPU is considered as the brain of the computer.
o CPU performs all types of data processing operations.
o It stores data, intermediate result and instructions (program).
o It controls the operations of all parts of computer.
• Memory and Storage Devices - You need memory for storing various
files used during production, original audio and video clips, edited
pieces and final mined pieces. You also need memory for backup of
your project files.
o Primary Memory- Primary memory holds only those data and
instructions on which computer is currently working. It has
limited capacity and data gets lost when power is switched off.
It is generally made up of semiconductor device. These
memories are not as fast as registers. The data and
instructions required to be processed earlier reside in main
memory. It is divided into two subcategories RAM and ROM.

o Flash Memory- Cache memory is a very high speed

semiconductor memory, which can speed up CPU. It acts as a
buffer between the CPU and main memory. It is used to hold
those parts of data and program which are most frequently
used by CPU. The parts of data and programs are transferred
from disk to cache memory by operating system, from where
CPU can access them.
o Secondary Memory: This type of memory is also known as
external memory or non-volatile. It is slower than main memory.
These are used for storing Data/Information permanently. CPU
directly does not access these memories; instead they are
accessed via input-output routines. Contents of secondary
memories are first transferred to main memory and then CPU
can access it. For example, disk, CD-ROM, DVD, etc.
• Input Devices - Following are the various types of input devices which
are used in multimedia systems.
o Keyboard- Most common and very popular input device is
keyboard. The keyboard helps in inputting the data to the
computer. The layout of the keyboard is like that of traditional
typewriter, although there are some additional keys provided for
performing some additional functions. Keyboards are of two
sizes 84 keys or 101/102 keys, but now 104 keys or 108 keys
keyboard is also available for Windows and Internet. The keys
are following:

Sr.
Keys Description
No.

These keys include the letter keys (A-Z) and digits keys
Typing
1 (0-9) which generally give same layout as that of
Keys
typewriters.

It is used to enter numeric data or cursor movement.

Numeric Generally, it consists of a set of 17 keys that are laid
2
Keypad out in the same configuration used by most adding machine
and calculators.

The twelve functions keys are present on the keyboard.

Function These are arranged in a row along the top of the keyboard
3
Keys Each function key has unique meaning and is used for some
specific purpose.

These keys provide cursor and screen control. It includes

Control four directional arrow key. Control keys also include
4
keys Home, End, Insert, Delete, Page Up, Page Down,
Control(Ctrl), Alternate(Alt), Escape(Esc).

Special Keyboard also contains some special purpose keys such as

5 Purpose Enter, Shift, Caps Lock, Num Lock, Space bar, Tab, and
Keys Print Screen.
o

o Mouse - Mouse is most popular Pointing device. It is a very

famous cursor-control device. It is a small palm size box with a
round ball at its base which senses the movement of mouse
and sends corresponding signals to CPU on pressing the
buttons. Generally, it has two buttons called left and right button
and scroll bar is present at the mid. Mouse can be used to
control the position of cursor on screen, but it cannot be used to
enter text into the computer.

o Joystick - Joystick is also a pointing device, which is used to

move cursor position on a monitor screen. It is a stick having a
spherical ball at its both lower and upper ends. The lower
spherical ball moves in a socket. The joystick can be moved in
all four directions. The function of joystick is similar to that of a
mouse. It is mainly used in Computer Aided Designing (CAD)
and playing computer games.

o Light Pen - Light pen is a pointing device, which is similar to a

pen. It is used to select a displayed menu item or draw pictures
 on the monitor screen. It consists of a photocell and an optical
system placed in a small tube. When light pen's tip is moved
over the monitor screen and pen button is pressed, its photocell
sensing element detects the screen location and sends the
corresponding signal to the CPU.

o Track Ball - Track ball is an input device that is mostly used in

notebook or laptop computer, instead of a mouse. This is a ball,
which is half inserted and by moving fingers on ball, pointer can
be moved.Since the whole device is not moved, a track ball
requires less space than a mouse. A track ball comes in
various shapes like a ball, a button and a square.

o Scanner - Scanner is an input device, which works more like a

photocopy machine. It is used when some information is
available on a paper and it is to be transferred to the hard disc
of the computer for further manipulation. Scanner captures
images from the source which are then converted into the
digital form that can be stored on the disc. These images can
be edited before they are printed.

o Digitizer - Digitizer is an input device, which converts analog

information into a digital form. Digitizer can convert a signal
from the television camera into a series of numbers that could
be stored in a computer. They can be used by the computer to
 create a picture of whatever the camera had been pointed at.
Digitizer is also known as Tablet or Graphics Tablet because it
converts graphics and pictorial data into binary inputs. A
graphic tablet as digitizer is used for doing fine works of
drawing and images manipulation applications.

o Magnetic Ink Card Reader (MICR) - MICR input device is

generally used in banks because of a large number of cheques
to be processed everyday. The bank's code number and
cheque number are printed on the cheques with a special type
of ink that contains particles of magnetic material that are
machine readable. This reading process is called Magnetic Ink
Character Recognition (MICR). The main advantage of MICR is
that it is fast and less error prone.

o Optical Character Reader (OCR) - OCR is an input device

used to read a printed text. OCR scans text optically character
by character, converts them into a machine readable code and
stores the text on the system memory.

o Bar Code Readers - Bar Code Reader is a device used for

reading bar coded data (data in form of light and dark lines).
Bar coded data is generally used in labelling goods, numbering
the books, etc. It may be a hand-held scanner or may be
embedded in a stationary scanner.Bar Code Reader scans a
 bar code image, converts it into an alphanumeric value, which
is then fed to the computer to which bar code reader is
connected.

o Optical Mark Reader (OMR) - OMR is a special type of optical

scanner used to recognize the type of mark made by pen or
pencil. It is used where one out of a few alternatives is to be
selected and marked. It is specially used for checking the
answer sheets of examinations having multiple choice
questions.

o Voice Systems - Following are the various types of input

devices which are used in multimedia systems.
▪ Microphone- Microphone is an input device to input
sound that is then stored in digital form. The microphone
is used for various applications like adding sound to a
multimedia presentation or for mixing music.

▪ Speaker- Speaker is an output device to produce sound

which is stored in digital form. The speaker is used for
various applications like adding sound to a multimedia
presentation or for movies displays etc.
 o Digital Camera - Digital camera is an input device to input
images that is then stored in digital form. The digital camera is
used for various applications like adding images to a
multimedia presentation or for personal purposes.

o Digital Video Camera - Digital Video camera is an input device

to input images/video that is then stored in digital form. The
digital video camera is used for various applications like adding
videos to a multimedia presentation or for personal purposes.

• Output Devices - Following are few of the important output devices,

which are used in Computer Systems:
o Monitors - Monitor commonly called as Visual Display Unit
(VDU) is the main output device of a computer. It forms images
from tiny dots, called pixels, that are arranged in a rectangular
form. The sharpness of the image depends upon the number of
the pixels. There are two kinds of viewing screen used for
monitors:
▪ Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT) Monitor- In the CRT, display
is made up of small picture elements called pixels for
short. The smaller the pixels, the better the image clarity
 or resolution. It takes more than one illuminated pixel to
form whole character, such as the letter 'e' in the word
help. A finite number of characters can be displayed on
a screen at once. The screen can be divided into a
series of character boxes - fixed location on the screen
where a standard character can be placed. Most screens
are capable of displaying 80 characters of data
horizontally and 25 lines vertically.

▪ Flat-Panel Display Monitor- The flat-panel display

refers to a class of video devices that have reduced
volume, weight and power requirement compared to the
CRT. You can hang them on walls or wear them on your
wrists. Current uses for flat-panel displays include
calculators, video games, monitors, laptop computer,
graphics display. The flat-panel displays are divided into
two categories:
▪ Emissive Displays- The emissive displays are
devices that convert electrical energy into light.
Examples are plasma panel and LED (Light-
Emitting Diodes).
▪ Non-Emissive Displays- The Non-emissive
displays use optical effects to convert sunlight or
light from some other source into graphics
patterns. Example is LCD (Liquid-Crystal Device)

• Printers - Printer is the most important output device, which is used to

print information on paper.
o Dot Matrix Printer- In the market, one of the most popular
printers is Dot Matrix Printer because of their ease of printing
 features and economical price. Each character printed is in
form of pattern of Dot's and head consists of a Matrix of Pins of
size (5*7, 7*9, 9*7 or 9*9) which comes out to form a character
that is why it is called Dot Matrix Printer.

o Daisy Wheel- Head is lying on a wheel and Pins corresponding

to characters are like petals of Daisy (flower name) that is why
it is called Daisy Wheel Printer. These printers are generally
used for word-processing in offices which require a few letters
to be send here and there with very nice quality representation.

o Line Printers- Line printers are printers, which print one line at
a time.

o Laser Printers- These are non-impact page printers. They use

laser lights to produce the dots needed to form the characters
to be printed on a page.
 o Inkjet Printers- Inkjet printers are non-impact character printers
based on a relatively new technology. They print characters by
spraying small drops of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers produce
high quality output with presentable features. They make less
noise because no hammering is done and these have many
styles of printing modes available. Colour printing is also
possible. Some models of Inkjet printers can produce multiple
copies of printing also.

• Screen Image Projector - Screen image projector or simply projector

is an output device used to project information from a computer on a
large screen so that a group of people can see it simultaneously. A
presenter first makes a PowerPoint presentation on the computer.
Now a screen image projector is plugged to a computer system and
presenter can make a presentation to a group of people by projecting
the information on a large screen. Projector makes the presentation
more understandable.

• Speakers and Sound Card - Computers need both a sound card and
speakers to hear audio, such as music, speech and sound effects.
Most motherboards provide an on-board sound card. This built-in-
sound card is fine for the most purposes. The basic functions of a
sound card are that it converts digital sound signals to analog for
speakers making it louder or softer.
Multimedia Software

Multimedia software tells the hardware what to do. For example, multimedia
software tells the hardware to display the color blue, play the sound of
cymbals crashing etc. To produce these media elements( movies, sound,
text, animation, graphics etc.) there are various software available in the
market such as Paint Brush, Photo Finish, Animator, Photo Shop, 3D Studio,
Corel Draw, Sound Blaster, IMAGINET, Apple Hyper Card, Photo Magic,
Picture Publisher.

Multimedia Software Categories

Following are the various categories of Multimedia software

• Device Driver Software- These softwares are used to install and
configure the multimedia peripherals.
• Media Players- Media players are applications that can play one or
more kind of multimedia file format.
• Media Conversion Tools- These tools are used for encoding /
decoding multimedia contexts and for converting one file format to
another.
• Multimedia Editing Tools- These tools are used for creating and
editing digital multimedia data.
• Multimedia Authoring Tools- These tools are used for combing
different kinds of media formats and deliver them as multimedia
contents.

Multimedia Application:

Multimedia applications are created with the help of following mentioned

tools and packages.
The sound, text, graphics, animation and video are the integral part of
multimedia software. To produce and edit these media elements, there are
various software tools available in the market. The categories of basic
software tools are:
• Text Editing Tools- These tools are used to create letters, resumes,
invoices, purchase orders, user manual for a project and other
documents. MS-Word is a good example of text tool. It has following
features:
o Creating new file, opening existing file, saving file and printing it.
o Insert symbol, formula and equation in the file.
o Correct spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
o Align text within margins.
o Insert page numbers on the top or bottom of the page.
o Mail-merge the document and making letters and envolpes.
o Making tables with variable number of columns and rows.
• Painting and Drawing Tools- These tools generally come with a
graphical user interface with pull down menus for quick selection. You
can create almost all kinds of possible shapes and resize them using
these tools. Drawing file can be imported or exported in many image
formats like .gif, .tif, .jpg, .bmp, etc. Some examples of drawing
software are Corel Draw, Freehand, Designer, Photoshop, Fireworks,
Point etc.These software have following features:
o Tools to draw a straight line, rectangular area, circle etc.
o Different colour selection option.
o Pencil tool to draw a shape freehand.
o Eraser tool to erase part of the image.
o Zooming for magnified pixel editing.
• Image Editing Tools- Image editing tools are used to edit or reshape
the existing images and pictures. These tools can be used to create
an image from scratch as well as images from scanners, digital
cameras, clipart files or original artwork files created with painting and
drawing tools. Examples of Image editing or processing software are
Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.
• Sound Editing Tools- These tools are used to integrate sound into
multimedia project very easily. You can cut, copy, paste and edit
segments of a sound file by using these tools. The presence of sound
greatly enhances the effect of a mostly graphic presentation,
especially in a video. Examples of sound editing software tools are:
 Cool Edit Pro, Sound Forge and Pro Tools. These software have
following features:
o Record your own music, voice or any other audio.
o Record sound from CD, DVD, Radio or any other sound player.
o You can edit, mix the sound with any other audio.
o Apply special effects such as fade, equalizer, echo, reverse and
more.
• Video Editing Tools- These tools are used to edit, cut, copy, and
paste your video and audio files. Video editing used to require
expensive, specialized equipment and a great deal of knowledge. The
aritistic process of video editing consists of deciding what elements to
retain, delete or combine from various sources so that they come
together in an organized, logical and visually planning manner. Today
computers are powerful enough to handle this job, disk space is cheap
and storing and distributing your finished work on DVD is very easy.
Examples of video editing software are Adobe Premiere and Adobe
After Effects.
• Animation and Modeling Tools- An animation is to show the still
images at a certain rate to give it visual effect with the help of
Animation and modeling tools. These tools have features like multiple
windows that allow you to view your model in each dimension, ability
to drag and drop primitive shapes into a scene, color and texture
mapping, ability to add realistic effects such as transparency,
shadowing and fog etc. Examples of Animations and modeling tools
are 3D studio max and Maya.

Multimedia Images & Graphics

An image consists of a rectangular array of dots called pixels. The size of the
image is specified in terms of width X height, in numbers of the pixels. The
physical size of the image, in inches or centimeters, depends on the
resolution of the device on which the image is displayed. The resolution is
usually measured in DPI (Dots Per Inch). An image will appear smaller on a
device with a higher resolution than on one with a lower resolution. For color
images, one needs enough bits per pixel to represent all the colors in the
image. The number of the bits per pixel is called the depth of the image.

Image data types

Images can be created by using different techniques of representation of

data called data type like monochrome and colored images. Monochrome
image is created by using single color whereas colored image is created by
using multiple colors. Some important data types of images are following:
• 1-bit images- An image is a set of pixels. Note that a pixel is a picture
element in digital image. In 1-bit images, each pixel is stored as a
single bit (0 or 1). A bit has only two states either on or off, white or
black, true or false. Therefore, such an image is also referred to as a
binary image, since only two states are available. 1-bit image is also
known as 1-bit monochrome images because it contains one color
that is black for off state and white for on state.
A 1-bit image with resolution 640*480 needs a storage space of
640*480 bits.
640 x 480 bits. = (640 x 480) / 8 bytes = (640 x 480) / (8 x 1024) KB=
37.5KB.
The clarity or quality of 1-bit image is very low.
• 8-bit Gray level images- Each pixel of 8-bit gray level image is
represented by a single byte (8 bits). Therefore each pixel of such
image can hold 28=256 values between 0 and 255. Therefore each
pixel has a brightness value on a scale from black (0 for no brightness
or intensity) to white (255 for full brightness or intensity). For example,
a dark pixel might have a value of 15 and a bright one might be 240.
A grayscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel
is a single sample, which carries intensity information. Images are
composed exclusively of gray shades, which vary from black being at
the weakest intensity to white being at the strongest. Grayscale
images carry many shades of gray from black to white. Grayscale
images are also called monochromatic, denoting the presence of only
one (mono) color (chrome). An image is represented by bitmap. A
bitmap is a simple matrix of the tiny dots (pixels) that form an image
and are displayed on a computer screen or printed.
A 8-bit image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of 640
x 480 bytes=(640 x 480)/1024 KB= 300KB. Therefore an 8-bit image
needs 8 times more storage space than 1-bit image.
• 24-bit color images - In 24-bit color image, each pixel is represented
by three bytes, usually representing RGB (Red, Green and Blue).
Usually true color is defined to mean 256 shades of RGB (Red, Green
and Blue) for a total of 16777216 color variations. It provides a method
of representing and storing graphical image information an RGB color
space such that a colors, shades and hues in large number of
variations can be displayed in an image such as in high quality photo
graphic images or complex graphics.
 Many 24-bit color images are stored as 32-bit images, and an extra
byte for each pixel used to store an alpha value representing special
effect information.
A 24-bit color image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space
of 640 x 480 x 3 bytes = (640 x 480 x 3) / 1024=900KB without any
compression. Also 32-bit color image with resolution 640 x 480 needs
a storage space of 640 x 480 x 4 bytes= 1200KB without any
compression.

Disadvantages

o Require large storage space

o Many monitors can display only 256 different colors at any one
time. Therefore, in this case it is wasteful to store more than
256 different colors in an image.
• 8-bit color images - 8-bit color graphics is a method of storing image
information in a computer's memory or in an image file, where one
byte (8 bits) represents each pixel. The maximum number of colors
that can be displayed at once is 256. 8-bit color graphics are of two
forms. The first form is where the image stores not color but an 8-bit
index into the color map for each pixel, instead of storing the full 24-bit
color value. Therefore, 8-bit image formats consists of two parts: a
color map describing what colors are present in the image and the
array of index values for each pixel in the image. In most color maps
each color is usually chosen from a palette of 16,777,216 colors (24
bits: 8 red, 8green, 8 blue).
The other form is where the 8-bits use 3 bits for red, 3 bits for green
and 2 bits for blue. This second form is often called 8-bit true color as
it does not use a palette at all. When a 24-bit full color image is turned
into an 8-bit image, some of the colors have to be eliminated, known
as color quantization process.
A 8-bit color image with resolution 640 x 480 needs a storage space of
640 x 480 bytes=(640 x 480) / 1024KB= 300KB without any
compression.

Color lookup tables

A color loop-up table (LUT) is a mechanism used to transform a range of

input colors into another range of colors. Color look-up table will convert the
logical color numbers stored in each pixel of video memory into physical
colors, represented as RGB triplets, which can be displayed on a computer
monitor. Each pixel of image stores only index value or logical color number.
For example if a pixel stores the value 30, the meaning is to go to row 30 in a
color look-up table (LUT). The LUT is often called a Palette.
Characteristic of LUT are following:
• The number of entries in the palette determines the maximum number
of colors which can appear on screen simultaneously.
• The width of each entry in the palette determines the number of colors
which the wider full palette can represent.
A common example would be a palette of 256 colors that is the number of
entries is 256 and thus each entry is addressed by an 8-bit pixel value. Each
color can be chosen from a full palette, with a total of 16.7 million colors that
is the each entry is of 24 bits and 8 bits per channel which sets the total
combinations of 256 levels for each of the red, green and blue components
256 x 256 x 256 =16,777,216 colors.

Image file formats

• GIF- Graphics Interchange Formats- The GIF format was created by

Compuserve. It supports 256 colors. GIF format is the most popular
on the Internet because of its compact size. It is ideal for small icons
used for navigational purpose and simple diagrams. GIF creates a
table of up to 256 colors from a pool of 16 million. If the image has
less than 256 colors, GIF can easily render the image without any loss
of quality. When the image contains more colors, GIF uses algorithms
to match the colors of the image with the palette of optimum set of 256
colors available. Better algorithms search the image to find and the
optimum set of 256 colors.
Thus GIF format is lossless only for the image with 256 colors or less.
In case of a rich, true color image GIF may lose 99.998% of the colors.
GIF files can be saved with a maximum of 256 colors. This makes it is
a poor format for photographic images.
GIFs can be animated, which is another reason they became so
successful. Most animated banner ads are GIFs. GIFs allow single bit
transparency that is when you are creating your image, you can
specify which color is to be transparent. This provision allows the
background colors of the web page to be shown through the image.
• JPEG- Joint Photographic Experts Group- The JPEG format was
developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG files are
bitmapped images. It store information as 24-bit color. This is the
format of choice for nearly all photograph images on the internet.
 Digital cameras save images in a JPEG format by default. It has
become the main graphics file format for the World Wide Web and any
browser can support it without plug-ins. In order to make the file small,
JPEG uses lossy compression. It works well on photographs, artwork
and similar materials but not so well on lettering, simple cartoons or
line drawings. JPEG images work much better than GIFs. Though
JPEG can be interlaced, still this format lacks many of the other
special abilities of GIFs, like animations and transparency, but they
really are only for photos.
• PNG- Portable Network Graphics- PNG is the only lossless format
that web browsers support. PNG supports 8 bit, 24 bits, 32 bits and 48
bits data types. One version of the format PNG-8 is similar to the GIF
format. But PNG is the superior to the GIF. It produces smaller files
and with more options for colors. It supports partial transparency also.
PNG-24 is another flavor of PNG, with 24-bit color supports, allowing
ranges of color akin to high color JPEG. PNG-24 is in no way a
replacement format for JPEG because it is a lossless compression
format. This means that file size can be rather big against a
comparable JPEG. Also PNG supports for up to 48 bits of color
information.
• TIFF- Tagged Image File Format- The TIFF format was developed by
the Aldus Corporation in the 1980 and was later supported by
Microsoft. TIFF file format is widely used bitmapped file format. It is
supported by many image editing applications, software used by
scanners and photo retouching programs.
TIFF can store many different types of image ranging from 1 bit image,
grayscale image, 8 bit color image, 24 bit RGB image etc. TIFF files
originally use lossless compression. Today TIFF files also use lossy
compression according to the requirement. Therefore, it is a very
flexible format. This file format is suitable when the output is printed.
Multi-page documents can be stored as a single TIFF file and that is
way this file format is so popular. The TIFF format is now used and
controlled by Adobe.
• BMP- Bitmap- The bitmap file format (BMP) is a very basic format
supported by most Windows applications. BMP can store many
different type of image: 1 bit image, grayscale image, 8 bit color image,
24 bit RGB image etc. BMP files are uncompressed. Therefore, these
are not suitable for the internet. BMP files can be compressed using
lossless data compression algorithms.
• EPS- Encapsulated Postscript- The EPS format is a vector based
graphic. EPS is popular for saving image files because it can be
imported into nearly any kind of application. This file format is suitable
 for printed documents. Main disadvantage of this format is that it
requires more storage as compare to other formats.
• PDF- Portable Document Format- PDF format is vector graphics with
embedded pixel graphics with many compression options. When your
document is ready to be shared with others or for publication. This is
only format that is platform independent. If you have Adobe Acrobat
you can print from any document to a PDF file. From illustrator you
can save as .PDF.
• EXIF- Exchange Image File- Exif is an image format for digital
cameras. A variety of tage are available to facilitate higher quality
printing, since information about the camera and picture - taking
condition can be stored and used by printers for possible color
correction algorithms.it also includes specification of file format for
audio that accompanies digital images.
• WMF- Windows MetaFile- WMF is the vector file format for the MS-
Windows operating environment. It consists of a collection of graphics
device interface function calls to the MS-Windows graphice drawing
library.Metafiles are both small and flexible, hese images can be
displayed properly by their proprietary softwares only.
• PICT- PICT images are useful in Macintosh software development, but
you should avoid them in desktop publishing. Avoid using PICT format
in electronic publishing-PICT images are prone to corruption.
• Photoshop- This is the native Photoshop file format created by Adobe.
You can import this format directly into most desktop publishing
applications.