Week 1 – Introduction

We had a brief introduction about colours. First, the Colour Theory which basically talks about the primary colours and when mixed together it produces secondary colours. Such as Blue and Yellow when combined it produces Green. Second, the Colour Models which are the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key). Third, the Psychology of Colour that refers to the different meaning of the colours. Although there are basic colour meanings, as far as I’m concern, it also depends from the country, religion, culture, beliefs etc. So might as well consider these things before making some projects. Fourth, the Web Safe Colour, you can actually see this in adobe photoshop under the colour picker. From the word itself, we can determine if the colour we choose is safe for web. Last but not the least, the Colour Wheel, Hue, Saturation, Tint, Shade, Gamut and Colour Wizard. These things will be helpful in manipulating colours upon doing our project.

Moreover, besides discussing the different kinds of Image File Format, we were able to practice it at the laboratory. I downloaded some files from the VLE and have to find out which application these files can be opened or displayed.  These are as follows:

GIF – Graphics Interchange Format
JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group
TGA – Targa
TIFF – Tagged Image File Format
PNG – Portable Network Graphics
SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics
BMP – Bitmap
EXR – OpenEXR

These are the different image formats. I am much aware with GIF, JPEG and PNG for I used it before. From the basic, JPEG, TIFF, PNG and BMP were successfully displayed in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Actually, the file icon itself will tell you what application you can used to open it. Like TGA, at home, I was able to open it in QuickTime Picture Viewer as shown on its icon. Although GIF can also be opened in Windows Live Photo Gallery, I think it is associated with any browser so it will automatically open there. And animated GIF is best viewed on browsers.

PNG is best if the image has a transparent background whereas JPEG doesn’t support it. However, PNG has a larger file size compared to JPEG. I used animated GIF with the websites I maintain before.
  
On the other hand, I don’t really use SVG and EXR so I searched the internet to understand more of these files. SVG uses an XML text file to manipulate the image behaviour. Windows suggest that it can be opened with Paint Shop Pro. While EXR is a high dynamic range image that sounds like the quality of image is really good.

Thus, all these image formats are used differently. In addition to that, different softwares are used to create and edit those formats. 

References:
Windows. File Association. [online] Available at <http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT=svg> Accessed at 24 September 2011
Wikipedia. Scalable Vector Graphics. [online] Available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics> [Accessed at 24 September 2011].
Wikipedia. OpenEXR. [online] Available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenEXR> [Accessed at 24 September 2011].