INTRODUCTION TO

GRAPHICS AND
MULTIMEDIA
Multimedia
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
Multimedia contrasts with media that use only basic computer displays such as text-
only or traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material.
Examples of multimedia
E-Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Video Conferencing, and Multimedia Message Service
(MMS)
 Multimedia continue…
• Multimedia means that computer information can be represented through
audio, graphics, image, video and animation in addition to traditional media
(text and graphics).
• It provides multiple ways to represent information to the user in a powerful
manner. It provides an interaction between users and digital information.
• Simply multimedia is a medium of communication.
• Multimedia is the combination of Multi and Media that is many types of
media (hardware/software) used for communication of information.
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• Multimedia is the integration of more than one type of medium to convey a
message. This includes the usage of photo’s, text, audio, video etc.
• Sectors where multimedia is used extensively includes education, training,
reference material, business presentations, advertising and documentaries
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Categories of Multimedia
• Linear
active content progresses without any navigation control for the viewer such as a
cinema presentation.
• Non-linear
content offers user interactivity to control progress as used with a computer
game or used in self-paced computer based training. Non-linear content is also
known as hypermedia content.
• Multimedia presentations can be live or recorded.
• Recorded presentation may allow interactivity via a navigation system.
• Live multimedia presentation may allow interactivity via interaction with the
presenter or performer.
Features of Multimedia
• Multimedia presentations
May be viewed in person on stage, projected, transmitted, or played locally with
a media player.
A broadcast may be a live or recorded multimedia presentation.
Broadcasts and recordings can be either analog or digital electronic media
technology.
Digital online multimedia may be downloaded or streamed. Streaming
multimedia may be live or on-demand.
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Multimedia games and simulations
May be used in a physical environment with special effects, with multiple users
in an online network, or locally with an offline computer, game system, or
simulator.
Enhanced levels of interactivity are made possible by combining multiple forms
of media content
Depending on what multimedia content you have it may vary Online
multimedia is increasingly becoming object-oriented and data-driven, enabling
applications with collaborative end-user innovation and personalization on
multiple forms of content over time
Applications of Multimedia
• Multimedia finds its application in various areas including, but not limited to,
advertisements, art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine,
mathematics, business, scientific research and spatial temporal applications.
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• Creative industries
Creative industries use multimedia for a variety of purposes ranging from fine
arts, to entertainment, to commercial art, to journalism, to media and software
services.
An individual multimedia designer may cover the spectrum throughout their
career.
Request for their skills range from technical to analytical and to creative
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• Commercial
Much of the electronic old and new media utilized by commercial artists is
multimedia.
Exciting presentations are used to grab and keep attention in advertising.
Industrial, business to business, and interoffice communications are often
developed by creative services firms for advanced multimedia presentations
beyond simple slide shows to sell ideas or liven-up training
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• Entertainment and Fine Arts
Multimedia is heavily used in the entertainment industry, especially to develop
special effects in movies and animations.
Multimedia games are a popular pastime and are software programs available
either as CD-ROMs or online
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• Education
In Education, multimedia is used to produce computer-based training courses
(popularly called CBTs) and reference books like encyclopedia and almanacs.
A CBT lets the user go through a series of presentations, text about a particular
topic, and associated illustrations in various information formats
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• Engineering
Software engineers may use multimedia in Computer Simulations for anything
from entertainment to training such as military or industrial training.
Multimedia for software interfaces are often done as collaboration between
creative professionals and software engineers.
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• Industry
In the Industrial sector, multimedia is used as a way to help present information
to shareholders, superiors and coworkers.
Multimedia is also helpful for providing employee training, advertising and
selling products all over the world via virtually unlimited web-based
technologies.
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• Mathematical and Scientific Research
In Mathematical and Scientific Research, multimedia is mainly used for
modeling and simulation.
For example, a scientist can look at a molecular model of a particular substance
and manipulate it to arrive at a new substance
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• Medicine
In Medicine, doctors can get trained by looking at a virtual surgery or they can
simulate how the human body is affected by diseases spread by viruses and
bacteria and then develop techniques to prevent it
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• Medicine
In Medicine, doctors can get trained by looking at a virtual surgery or they can
simulate how the human body is affected by diseases spread by viruses and
bacteria and then develop techniques to prevent it
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• Multimedia in Public Places
In hotels, railway stations, shopping malls, museums, and grocery stores, multimedia
will become available at stand-alone terminals to provide information and help.
Such installation reduce demand on traditional information personnel, and they can
work around the clock, even in the middle of the night, when live help is off duty.
Hotel list nearby restaurant, maps of the city, airline schedules, and provide guest
services such as automated checkout.
Printers are often attached so users can walk away with a printed copy of the
information.
Advantages of multimedia
• It is very user-friendly
It doesn’t take much energy out of the user, in the sense that you can sit and
watch the presentation, you can read the text and hear the audio
• It is multi sensorial (multi-sensory)
It uses a lot of the user’s senses while making use of multimedia, for example
hearing, seeing and talking.
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• It is integrated and interactive
All the different mediums are integrated through the digitization process.
Interactivity is heightened by the possibility of easy feedback.
• It is flexible.
Being digital, this media can easily be changed to fit different situations and
audiences.
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• It can be used for a wide variety of audiences,
ranging from one person to a whole group. Example online games where
multiple user play different roles
• It can bring a number of advantages to the education.
It can help learners come to a deeper understanding through supporting
materials when new material is being presented
Disadvantages of multimedia
• Information overload
Because it is so easy to use, it can contain too much information at once.
• It takes time to compile
Even though it is flexible, it takes time to put the original draft together
It can be expensive.
Multimedia makes use of a wide range of resources, which can cost you a large
amount of money.
Disadvantages of multimedia
• Too much makes it unpractical
Large files like video and audio has an effect of the time it takes for your
presentation to load. Adding too much can mean that you have to use a larger
computer to store the files
In case you want to upload it onto the Internet, there are a few factors to keep in
mind, for example bandwidth and the user’s abilities.
Hardware required for Multimedia
• Most of the computers equipped with the hardware components required to
develop/view multimedia applications

• Following are the various categories of hardware required for multimedia

applications
 Processor
The heart of any multimedia computer is its processor.
CPU performs all types of data processing operations. It stores data,
intermediate result and instructions (program).
Today Core i5 or higher processor is recommended for a multimedia computer.
For example computers to play heavy resource games.
 Memory and Storage Devices
Memory is required for storing various files used during production, original
audio and video clips, edited pieces and final mined pieces.
Memory is required for backup of project files.
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 divided into two subcategories RAM and ROM.
• Flash Memory: Cache memory is a very high speed 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.

• 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
 Input Devices 
Following are the various types of input devices which are used in multimedia
systems.
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. 
Mouse can be used to control the position of cursor on screen, but it cannot be
used to enter text into the computer.
• Keyboard: Most common and very popular input device is keyboard. The
keyboard helps in inputting the data to the computer.
• 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
• 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
• Digitizer: Digitizer is an input device, which converts analog information into
a digital form.
Digitizer is also known as Tablet or Graphics Tablet.
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.
• 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.
• Microphone: Microphone is an input device to input sound that is then stored
in digital form
• 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.
 Output Devices
Following are few of the important output devices, which are used in Computer
Systems
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.
Printers: Printer is the most important output device, which is used to print
information on paper.
• 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.
• 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
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 such as Paint Brush, Photo Finish,
Animator, Photo Shop, 3D Studio, Corel Draw, Sound Blaster, IMAGINET,
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 different 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:
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 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:
• Creating new file, opening existing file, saving file and printing it.

• Insert symbol, formula and equation in the file.

• Align text within margins.

• Insert page numbers on the top or bottom of the page.

• Mail-merge the document and making letters and envolpes.

• Making tables with variable number of columns and rows.

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 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.
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• These software have following features:

• Tools to draw a straight line, rectangular area, circle etc.

• Different colour selection option.

• Pencil tool to draw a shape freehand.

• Eraser tool to erase part of the image.

• Zooming for magnified pixel editing.

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 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.
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 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
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• Record your own music, voice or any other audio.

• Record sound from CD, DVD, Radio or any other sound player.

• You can edit, mix the sound with any other audio.

• Apply special effects such as fade, equalizer, echo, reverse and more.
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 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 artistic 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.
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 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.