Design & Visualization

Design software focuses on the digital creation or re-creation of a thing or idea. Types of design range from print media, web site, computational, 3-dimensional, structural, simulation, and more. Simulation and modeling software is closely related and sometimes integrated with design software.

Visualization software includes applications that help visualize concepts, ideas, or scenarios. This includes diagramming, geographical visualization, molecular and structure visualization, graphical data representations, and some animation.

Also included in this category are applications used in presentations. This includes not only Powerpoint and powerpoint style presentations, but live polling software, presentation capture software, and web presentations as well. As well, applications used to create, edit, convert, or touch up digital images. Software ranges from photo editing, photo cataloging, graphic design, and diagramming. Finally there are applications used to edit web pages including code editors, What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) editors, and Content Management (CMS) systems that organize and manage web pages on a server.

InDesign

November 19, 2014 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Design & VisualizationMultimedia

InDesign logo

Availability: Labs | Faculty/Staff | Download
Part of: Adobe Creative Suite
Comparable: Publisher, Scribus, iBooks Author

Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. InDesign can also publish content suitable for tablet devices in conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Graphic designers and production artists are the principal users, creating and laying out periodical publications, posters, and print media. It also supports export to EPUB and SWF formats to create e-books and digital publications, including digital magazines, and content suitable for consumption on tablet computers. In addition, InDesign supports XML, style sheets and other coding markup, making it suitable for exporting tagged text content for use in other digital and online formats.

Tags: creative suiteEPUB

Inkscape

October 30, 2014 by Andy Voelker
Categories: Design & VisualizationMultimediaProductivity & Utility

Availability: Free Download
Comparable: Illustrator

Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software which runs on Linux, MacOS, and Windows. It is used by design professionals and hobbyists worldwide, for creating a wide variety of graphics such as illustrations, icons, logos, diagrams, maps and web graphics. Inkscape uses the W3C open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) as its native format, and is free and open-source software.

Inkscape has sophisticated drawing tools with capabilities comparable to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Xara Xtreme. It can import and export various file formats, including SVG, AI, EPS, PDF, PS and PNG. It has a comprehensive feature set, a simple interface, multi-lingual support and is designed to be extensible; users can customize Inkscape’s functionality with add-ons.

Tags: graphicsvector

iPhoto

December 19, 2013 by clas-web
Categories: Design & VisualizationMultimedia

Availability: Labs  |  Download
Comparable: Aperture, Lightroom, Picasa

iPhoto is a digital photograph manipulation software application for Mac OS which allows the user to import, organize, edit, print, and share digital photos.  iPhoto ships with all Mac computers and can also be downloaded in the Apple App Store.

While iPhoto serves as an easy to use editor and organizer, it also has several handy features.  Users can geotag photos that attach location metadata to the photo, documenting the location it was taken.  Another feature recognizes the faces of people in the photos, attaches metadata identifying the person, and offers searching and organization based on identities.  iPhoto can also organize slideshows based on event, date, person, or other metadata categories.  Users can also create books, calendars, or cards that Apple will professionally print and send to the user based on a fee.

Tags: trm