Limitations of hardware and software

Limitations of hardware and software

Software

GIMP

Photoshop

Paint.net

Paint.net is a free and open source bitmap image editor however, it has its limitations. Paint.net is only usable on Windows computers - meaning that Mac and Linux users miss-out. Many consider the layout of Paint.net to be annoying because none of the tools are fixed to a bar (on the left or right), this allows the tools to be picked up and moved.

While it does have these limitations, at also has loads of advantages; Paint.net is free, it supports plug-ins, it's open source and has tablet support

The specs for Paint.net are; Windows XP SP2+, 200MB of HDD space, a 800MHz processor, 512MB of RAM and .NET framework 3.5 SP1 - these fairly low specs makes Paint.net fairly accessible for Windows users only.

Photoshop is used by most digital artists. The advantages of Photoshop are; tablet support, it has plug-in support, lots of built-in filters and effects, has many imperfection correction tools and has lots of useful brushes to use.

However, Photoshop does have its disadvantages; Photoshop costs £330, has confusing interface to new users, 'too many' tools may be confusing and the native psd format has limited compatibility.

Here are the specifications for Photoshop CS6; Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 processor (around a 2GHz, multi-core, processor), Windows XP SP3+ or Mac OS X v10.6.8+, 1GB of RAM, 1GB of HDD space, 512MB of VRAM and OpenGL 2.0. - there's no Linux availability which limits the available audience for Photoshop.

GIMP (or GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a open source image editor. GIMP has some disadvantages; it has fewer effects than Photoshop and Paint.net, has a somewhat 'blocky' and cumbersome interface and limited tablet input support

However, GIMP does have some advantages, including; full plug-in support, custom brush support and a wide range of online tutorials.

Here are the specs for GIMP; Windows 2000+ (or Mac OS X+ or virtually any distribution of Linux), 128MB of RAM and 30MB of HDD space (although 150MB is strongly recommended) - GIMP is the only image editor package out of all the other packages that will run on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Intro

Comparison

Hardware

Each of the software packages have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Paint.net and GIMP's advantages over Photoshop include; they're free, it's open source and the community has developed many more filters and plug-ins than are available for Photoshop. However, GIMP has some more advantages over Paint.net, including; running on all major operating systems (this is also a advantage over Photoshop), GIMP can export to many more file types and more advanced image manipulation tools (such as stretching and skewering images).

However, Photoshop still has a number of advantages over GIMP and Paint.net, including; extensive image manipulation tools (such as stretching and skewing images), advanced filters and advanced tools (such as; clone tool, blur brushes and the art history brush tool).

Overall, I'd recommend Photoshop, however, since it's so expensive, I'd recommend GIMP if you don't have £330 to spare on image manipulation software.

In this Prezi presentation I'll be talking about the limitations of software packages (like; GIMP, Paint.net and Photoshop) and limitations of hardware(like graphics tablets and cards).

Graphics card

RAM

CPU

Hard drive

The CPU is the brain of the computer as all the information has to go through the CPU.

However, they do have some drawbacks; powerful CPUs are very expensive, some have limited compatibility with other components, less powerful ones will struggle to run demanding programs like Photoshop and they can use a lot of power.

RAM (or Random Access Memory) is like a small temporary hard drive where the computer can store temporary information to call later.

RAM has some drawbacks; some motherboards have limited space for RAM cards, cheap RAM may have a small capacity and may be slower than more expensive ones and not having enough RAM will cause programs such as Photoshop to run slowly.

The hard drive is responsible for storing all the information on a computer.

There are some drawbacks in some hard drives; cheaper ones have lower RPMs meaning that getting data off them takes longer, solid state drives have a small capacity and are expensive and disk hard drives are prone to breaking when moved in operation.

A graphics card is vital in image manipulation and design as the graphics card is used to render images and will help the computer process complex functions - such as the Magic Wand function.

However there are some limitation in graphics cards; the best graphics cards can cost thousands of pounds, they usually require a lot of space and draw a lot of power from the power supply.

GPU's have specifications too, the main specification for a GPU is the power supply, for example, the Radeon HD 7950 requires a power supply with at-least 300W free.