Photoshop or PhotoScape
Photo editing software is a software that people use for creating and modifying images nowadays. In my opinion, whether photographer or programmer, artist or poser, everyone wants to get beautiful and perfect picture, that’s why most people use editing software. There are many programs to choose, and they all include some good things and bad things. I think that the two most common editing software people choose for modifying a picture are the Photoshop and the PhotoScape. They both are actually different in several ways. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the usage, quality of image, and copyright of Photoshop and PhotoScape.
I am going to discuss the Photoshop first. The three aspects are usage, quality of image, and copyright. The usage is always important in order to access photos editing software. If a person dislikes the complicated step, he or she might have a hard time in Photoshop. The manual usage in Photoshop is the first difficulty in accessing them. The users have to adjust, edit, or modify the images by themselves. For example, if you need to adjust the contrast of the picture, you can use the tool provided in the program and change the radius as you like. Also, you can specify the number of contrast or radius in the program in changing your images. Even though Photoshop is very difficult but the hard usage and the various functions of Photoshop also determine the power and quality of the image they offer. RGB, CMYK, grayscale, binary bitmap, and duotone are some color models people can access when using Photoshop. Furthermore, Photoshop has the ability to save the image in many formats such as .EPS, .PNG, .GIF, .JPEG, and Fireworks. That is why they have high quality image. Although, Photoshop is good in quality and function, but they are not easy to download to your computer. Photoshop has no free download on the websites, you have to pay and agree with the license.
Next, I am going to discuss the PhotoScape. The three aspects are usage, quality of image, and copyright. Automatic usage is one of the most important features that PhotoScape has. Easy and convenient are two words that describe the PhotoScape. The usage in PhotoScape is very easy because there are many tools. You can click on the functions that you want such as colors, filters, brightness, resizes, rotate, frames, text, and others. Nonetheless, the easy usage of PhotoScape determines the low quality of image. PhotoScape can utilize only RGB color model and can save the image in .JPEG and .GIF format. Therefore, it cannot make your images to be high quality. However, PhotoScape is a freeware because it has no copyright or license. So, there are many websites that allow you to download this software to your computer.
In conclusion, the Photoshop is more difficult and has high quality of imagcompared to the PhotoScape. Users that have only little knowledge in modifying images will require the PhotoScape; whereas, advanced users require the Photoshop. I think it doesn’t matter what software a person decides to choose. Depending on what the person likes is what he or she will choose.
Sony Ericsson’s cell phone
Sony Ericsson is a global provider of mobile multimedia devices that was established on October 3, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company and the Swedish telecommunications company. The products combine technology with new application for mobile imaging, music, communications and entertainment. In my opinion, mobile phone is the most important thing for many people. They usually use mobile phone to communicate with each other, listen to music, play game, and others. Therefore, Sony Ericsson is a brand that becomes a choice for people. However, there are many models of Sony Ericsson’s cell phones according to the sale price of three models, Sony Ericsson J220i, Sony Ericsson W550i, and Sony Ericsson W960i.
The first model is a cheap Sony Ericsson’s cell phone, Sony Ericsson J220i. The J220i is a member of the Sony Ericsson J series which includes the Sony Ericsson J210i and the Sony Ericsson J230i. In Thailand, the J220i was released on September 14, 2005 with the cost of 1,990 baht. The J220i is just a phone that most people said it waste a lot of money. Because of low price cell phone, it is not includes the functions that user needs such as MP3, FM radio, Digital camera, Bluetooth, and others. Moreover, the J220i has just 0.5 MB and has no memory card. Thus, it is the cheap cell phone without special functions.
The second model is an affordable Sony Ericsson’s cell phone, Sony Ericsson W550i. The W550i was released on November 21, 2005 with the cost of 14,000 baht. It is the multimedia music phone called walkman. There are many functions such as MP3 (Walkman TM media player), FM radio, 1.3 mega pixels Digital camera, data transfer with Infrared and Bluetooth, Web Application 2.0 browser. Furthermore, the W550i has 256 MB phone memory and support 3D Java application. According to a moderate price, there are a special function of video recorder and sound recorder. The W550i has full-screen video capture and 4x digital camera zoom. So, it has higher sale price than the J220i. Nevertheless, 60 percent of people who said, “I am happy to pay more money for get a mobile phone that has full functions.” Thus, the W550i is an affordable cell phone that supports various functions.
In addition to the first two types, that is the Sony Ericsson W960i. The W960i is an expensive cell phone that is a member of the Sony Ericsson W series similar to W550i. It was release on June 14, 2008 with the cost of 23,900 baht. According to an expensive cell phone, there are many special functions such as LCD touch screen 262,144 colors, 3.2 mega pixels Digital camera (3x digital camera zoom and Autofocus), data transfer with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and support HTML/WAP 2.0 browser. In addition, the W960i has 8 GB phone memory and support Java application, MP3, ACC, FM radio, Sound recorder, Video recorder, and Video calls. Moreover, it has a function for watching TV on the cell phone. Therefore, the W960i is a cell phone with perfect functions but it is very expensive.
In conclusion, from the Sony Ericsson’s cell phone classification above, each model of cell phone gives different prices and different functions. If you want a cell phone that has fewer functions, you can choose the one that is cheap. Whether, if you have much more money, you can choose the best one for you. Hence, it is good to know the price and the information of cell phone to compare with your desire.
Visual Dictionary
In many languages, words can appear in many different forms, but most appear as headwords in dictionaries. Dictionaries are mostly found in form of a book, but there are some dictionaries that run on computers, called dictionary software. Recently, dictionary software has developed to “Visual dictionary,” which is a dictionary that is presented in a new technology. Visual dictionaries are often organized by themes and used pictures to represent the meaning of words. Hence, it is a kind of dictionary that makes people more excited to learn new vocabulary. Today, there are stand-alone visual dictionary and online visual dictionary to support users. The following paragraphs will show the three examples of these.
The first example is Merriam-Webster visual dictionary online. It is a collaborative project to collect as many photographs of words as possible with accurate terminology in up to six languages. Why visual dictionary? This is a good question. When you know what something looks like but do not know what it is called or when you know the word but cannot generate the concrete idea, the visual dictionary has the answer for you. At first look, you can match the word to the image. For example, when you search the word “fish,” a picture of a fish and the meaning will be displayed under the picture. Moreover, the picture will show the words that relate to fish such as anal fin, caudal fin, nostril, and others. In addition, Merriam-Webster visual dictionary is more than just a reliable resource of definition of vocabularies. One illustration of this idea that is eighty-seven percent of users registered for using this visual dictionary. They said, “The visual dictionary is a superbly conceived and designed software that is addictive as it useful. There is nothing like pictures to make things clear.” Therefore, the picture relates to different meanings can make words easier to understand.
The second example is Visual Thesaurus. It is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps with meaning and separates into branches of related words. The differences between Visual Thesaurus and Merriam-Webster is that the Visual Thesaurus does not show the picture of the words but it will show the meaning that looks like mind mapping. For instance, when you search the word “fish,” the results will show up the map and a fish in center of the map. Then the map branches to related words such as shoal, Pisces the fish, and others. The concept of Visual Thesaurus works like your brain. You will write more descriptively, and gain more understanding of English. A case in point is the quote from one expert, “The Visual Thesaurus is a web of verbal connections and it opens up is more than an aid in finding the right word. The program's think maps provide definitions and explanations that literally clarify one's thought processes and spark one's creativity.” Namely, the Visual Thesaurus is a revelation that supports a developing idea to say what picture shows the relationships of the words. Thus, it is for every age, for every need, and for everyone.
The third example is English to Thai Visual dictionary. Although, there are many visual dictionaries software that run on computers today, but they do not have the visual dictionary to translate from English to Thai language. There is one project that creates English to Thai dictionary, called “English to Thai visual dictionary.”
It uses the concept of Visual Thesaurus to create this one. It collects the words and represent as mind mapping with Thai meaning and branch to relative words. For instance, when you search the word “fish,” the map of this word will show up with the word “fish” in the center. The branches of the map will show the meaning of the word “fish” in Thai language such as, “ปลา”, “มัจฉา”, “เนื้อปลา”, and others. In addition, they added more function to support Thai people to learn the English language. It is the pronunciation sounds. One illustration of this idea is creating an icon of the sound on the map. The users can listen to the example of pronunciation sound by clicking that icon, and then they will hear the words pronounced correctly. The advantage of pronunciation sounds is that ninety percent of Thai people improve their English skills. They said, “This is the one that I need and cannot be bound in a book, it can make me more interested in learning English.” Therefore, English to Thai visual dictionary is a good helper for Thai people to understand English quickly.
In conclusion, Visual Dictionary is the new technology that makes people easier to understand English. It collects many words in real world and represents as much as possible ways for people to understand such as pictures, maps, sounds, and others. Also, it can show the relationship of words that help users learn the new things quickly. So, it is the dictionary for teachers, translators, students, and other people of all skill levels.
What is Adobe Photoshop?
Adobe Photoshop or simply Photoshop is the professional standard in digital imaging, with an endless selection of drawing tools, filters, and color-adjustment capabilities for manipulating items in almost any way (www.adobe.com). Traditionally, Adobe Photoshop has been and continues to be a print industry standard. It's likely that nearly every picture you've seen (such as posters, book covers, magazine pictures, and brochures) has been created or edited by Adobe Photoshop. The powerful tools used to improve and edit these pictures are also capable for use in the digital world including the infinite possibilities of the Internet. Moreover, Adobe Photoshop has the most intuitive user interface, the most complete set of tools, and the largest number of reference books around. Until today, Adobe Photoshop is embraced by millions of graphic artists, print designers, visual communicators, and regular people like you. Therefore, it is the most popular program for creating and modifying images nowadays. The objective of this article is to cover the history of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop CS3 version, and Adobe Photoshop CS4 version.
In 1987, Thomas Knoll, a PHD student at the University of Michigan began writing a program to display grayscale images on a monochrome display. This program called Display. Thomas took a six month break from his studies in 1988 to work with his brother, John Knoll, on the program. Then the program had been renamed to Image Pro. Later that year, Thomas renamed his program to Photoshop and worked out a short-term deal with scanner manufacturer to distribute copies of the program; a total of about 200 copies of Photoshop were shipped this way. During this time, John gave a demonstration of the program to art director at Adobe. This showing was successful and Adobe decides to buy the license to distribute in September 1988. While John worked on plug-ins, a plug-in is a program written by someone that is integrated into another application. The program plugs into the application. Plug-ins often provides additional functionality that isn't available in the application (www.davidgould.com,) Thomas remained writing program code by using C++ programming language. Then Photoshop 1.0 was released in 1990 for Macintosh only. In the following years, the new versions were released such as in 1992, a Microsoft Windows port of version 2.0 was released, in 1994, version 3.0 was also released, and a year later Photoshop was released Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite (CS).
The tenth version of Adobe Photoshop is Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3 (CS3). It is marketed with three main components of improvement over previous versions: Work more productively, edit with unrivaled power, and composite with breakthrough tools (www.wikipedia.com). In the past few versions, Adobe Photoshop has been accompanied with Image Ready. This sub-program is specifically made to deal with web applications including slicing Web images, supporting enhanced image maps, and compressing graphics files efficiently for the Web. For Adobe Photoshop CS3, the new features including streamlined interface, better control over print options, enhanced PDF support, improved Camera Raw, and better management with Adobe Bridge. Refers to Adobe Bridge, it is an organizational program created and released by Adobe Systems as a part of the Adobe Creative Suite. Its primary purpose is to link the parts of the Creative Suite together using a format similar to the file browser found in previous versions of Adobe Photoshop (www.wikipedia.com). Moreover, Adobe Photoshop CS3 extended contains all features of CS3 plus tools for editing and importing some 3D graphics file formats, enhancing video, and inclusive image analysis tools. So, that causes to make them have more interesting and challenging to use.
Few years later, Adobe invented the latest version, Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 4 (CS4). It is the software that provides improved access to its unrivaled power through a more intuitive user experience, greater editing freedom, and significant productivity enhancements (www.adobe.com). The new features additions such as the ability to paint directly on 3D models, better raw image processing, more powerful printing options, the new adjustments and masks panel, content-aware scaling, auto-blending of images, and efficient file management with Adobe Bridge CS4. This version has many new features that make it a substantial worthy upgrade. Although, Adobe Photoshop CS4 provided the better functions than Adobe Photoshop CS3, but it was not popular yet because it did not have the new operating system compatibility and rather difficult to use. However, it is very suitable for graphic artists and web designers to create the more beautiful graphics.
In conclusion, Adobe Photoshop has become the leading digital image editing application for the Internet, print and other new media disciplines. It lets you create eye-catching typography by placing text on paths or within shapes, perform shadow and highlight correction, explore expanded color-matching features, and preview, search, and share images. There are many features of Adobe Photoshop that have been invented so, it is almost impossible to use or even learn all of Photoshop’s tools.
Evolution of Computer Mouse
In computing, a mouse is a device that controls the movement of the cursor or pointer on a display screen. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons. It sometimes features other elements, such as "wheels," which allow the user to perform various operations, or extra buttons or features can add more control or dimensional input. Every day of your computing life, you reach out for your mouse whenever you want to move your cursor or activate something. Your mouse senses your motion and your clicks and sends them to the computer so it can respond appropriately. This article will take the cover of the evolution of the computer mouse from the very old one to the high-tech one.
In 1963, the first computer mouse started with a simple wooden device created by Douglas Engelbart and Bill English in a Stanford Research Center. The first computer mouse was actually known as the “bug” but people prefer to use the name as the “mouse.” The first computer mouse used two gear-wheels vertical to each other: the rotation of each wheel translated into motion along one axis. It is showing the wheels that make contact with the working surface. After that, the new mechanism of computer mouse so-called ball mouse (mechanical mouse) invented by Bill English in 1972 to replace the external wheels with a single ball that could rotate in any direction. The ball mouse utilizes two rollers rolling against two sides of the ball. One roller detects the forward–backward motion of the mouse and other detects the left–right motion. This new design incorporated a single hard rubber ball mouse and three buttons, and remained a common design until during the 1990s.
In 1990, the optical mouse created by Steve Kirsch and Richard F. Lyon has been release. The optical mouse actually uses a tiny camera to take thousands of pictures every second and uses a light-emitting diode (LED) and photodiodes to detect movement relative to the underlying surface, rather than moving some of its parts as in a mechanical mouse. In the beginning, optical mice work by using an optoelectronic sensor to take successive pictures of the surface on which the mouse operates. As the computing power grew cheaper, it became possible to more powerful special purpose image-processing chips in the mouse itself. This advance enabled the mouse to detect relative motion on a wide variety of surfaces such as metal, wood, rubber, and etc. Moreover, optical mice have no rolling parts; therefore, they do not require maintenance other than removing debris that might collect under the light emitter. However, they cannot track on glossy and transparent surfaces, sometimes causing the cursor to drift unpredictably during operation. Including, mice with less image-processing power also have problems tracking fast movement, sometimes causing the old mechanical mice better.
As early as 1998, the laser mouse provide by Sun Microsystems. The newer mice including some from Logitech's lx series use an infrared sensor diode instead of an LED. In addition, this mouse uses a small infrared laser and has significantly increased the resolution of the image taken by the mouse. The laser enables around 20 times more surface tracking power to the surface used for navigation compared to common optical mice. While the implementation of a laser slightly increases sensitivity and resolution, the main advantage comes from power usage. This saves power and can be more accurate. However, laser mice did not enter the market until 2004, when Logitech, in partnership with Agilent Technologies, introduced its MX 1000 laser mouse.
In conclusion, the computer mouse has been developing for a long time. The device evolved into various shapes and configurations, including new buttons that could be used for tasks such as gaming as well for navigation. Although, there are many types of mice we can choose such as ball mouse, optical mouse, and laser mouse, but the developers still improve the device until today. So, that causes the new technologies of mice to be invented continuously.
iGoogle
As we know, Google search is the most popular giant search engine in the world which is owned by Google, Inc., and it is the most popular search engine on the web. Most people use Google search to research something such as contents, descriptions, news websites, images, videos, and so on. It can be that Google is everything for us. Moreover, some also make Google search to be their favorite web page. Google has developed continuously and provided many services for users including Google Maps, Google Earth, Google News, Google Suggest, Google Translation, Google Desktop and the newest one that Google is launching is Google Personalized Homepage or iGoogle. The following paragraphs will explain about iGoogle.
Are you bored of using insipid Google for a long time? Then, do not be. Here is the new special project from Google, “iGoogle”. iGoogle formerly Google homepage, or the full name is Google Personalized Homepage is a special free service for users. It was originally launched in May 2005 but was renamed and expanded on April 30, 2007 and currently available in localized versions of Google. iGoogle looks like the basic Google web page that is used for searching anything but it on is your own web page. Users need to use their accounts from Gmail, My Yahoo, or Windows Live Personalize Experience to join with iGoogle. iGoogle is not only a search engine but it also allows people to create a customized portal with news, blogs, and other interactive modules. We can do it by imagining on the web page as we are drawing a picture on a paper. For example, we need to change the color of a web page, we can immediately do it by just changing the theme color or adding something more as we like. Furthermore, we can relocate everything on a web page from left to right or right to left or anywhere we want. Thus, iGoogle is a web page that is suitable for users who do not like the tediousness. The following paragraphs will mention in dept the features of iGoogle.
iGoogle is a home service page that allows user to add any contents on a web page such as news, games, RSS from websites or information that we want to know regularly. Also it has many special features. Users can adjust or add any information by themselves and it is called “Gadgets.” There are many types of gadgets which are designed to be shared with friends and family and must be created using an online wizard. First, Frame Photo, the users can display a series of photos and make a slide. Second, GoogleGram, users can create daily messages on a web page as we paste a note on board. Third, Daily Me, users can choose a cartoon face to display as user’s current mood such as smiling, serious or confused. Fourth, Free Form, allows the users to input something such as text or image. Users can write their stories and set it into the web page as journals. Moreover, iGoogle allows users to add other interesting and enjoyable gadgets with calendar, weather forecast and countdown time. So, iGoogle makes our web pages to be more exciting just like playing adventure games.
Another feature of iGoogle that makes it more interesting is “Themes.” With iGoogle, users can select their specific characteristic themes for their home pages. Some of the themes are cartoon animated and some are abstract and colorful. In addition, some are exciting depending on special function such as sound, movement and lighten or darken of skies. We can choose any from the list that iGoogle already provided on the web page as we like. Moreover, there are many themes created by a famous artist such as Colin Greenwood, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Philip Selway and Thom Yorke. We can see those themes on the web page as we are walking around the gallery. Thus, it is more wonderful and more attractive to join iGoogle.
However, iGoogle has remained the giant search engine all the time but improved its features to make more attractive web page. They present the interesting things to respond to users demands. Also, this change is successful and applauded by many users. Therefore, iGoogle is a new way of personal home page that is rather complete and also suitable for users do.
