Software applications

There are thousands of software applications and programs available to us but it’s useful to look at some of the most popular ones to find out why we use them.

Word processing

Word processors can be used to create any type of text-based document, from a letter to a novel. You can change a document’s appearance using a number of formatting options such as:

change the font and font size
bold, italicise and underline words
colour the text and the background
highlight words of importance

Text can be formatted in a word processing document

You can also add tables, images, clip art and shapes to a document. Use formatting sensibly and sparingly.

Mail merge

Mail merge lets you create a template and use it to personalise a document that you’re going to send to lots of people. For example, you write a party invitation that starts ‘Dear James’ and you use James’ name throughout. To turn this invitation into a template, replace all instances of James with a name placeholder. The name placeholder is linked to records in a database that contains all of your guests’ names. Mail merge will use your newly created template to make personalised invitations for all of your guests.

Desktop publishing

Desktop publishing software (DTP) is used to create documents like leaflets, brochures and newsletters.

Modern word processors have the basic features of DTP software but features such as templates and frames make DTP software better for complex page layouts.

Templates – examples to base your own document on. Templates provide an easy way of making documents look professional. If you want something that stands out, be aware that the same template can be used by many people.
Frames - boxes that can contain text or graphics. These can be moved around freely and resized to create the layout that you want.

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)

With WYSIWYG, what is shown on screen is exactly how it will look when printed. A number of office applications work in this way, including DTP software.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are used for calculations, simple databases and modelling.

A spreadsheet is made up of rows, columns and cells. Columns are labelled alphabetically, starting at A, and rows are labelled numerically starting at 1. Each cell has a unique cell reference. The first cell in a spreadsheet is A1, A2 is below A1, and B1 is to the right of A1. A cell can contain data, labels and formulae.

Spreadsheets are made up of rows, columns and cells

Formatting

The formatting options in word processors are present in spreadsheet applications. You can change the font type or font size of the text or make it bold, italicised and underlined in a cell.

Cells can be formatted too. You can change the background colour and add borders to them.

Formulas and functions

Spreadsheets are perfect for performing calculations with data. To do this you need to write a formula. All formulas start with an equals sign (=). You could use a formula to calculate a total. If one of the values that makes up the total changes, the total updates automatically.

More advanced formulas are called functions. These are complex formulas created for you. There are many to choose from and also specialist ones designed for particular jobs or areas of expertise.

Presenting information

Spreadsheet applications can automatically create graphs and charts to give a visual representation of your data.

Spreadsheet applications use data to create graphs and charts

Read the Spreadsheets Study Guide to learn more.

Presentation software

Presentation software is used to create slideshows. A slideshow is a series of slides. An individual slide can contain text, images, animations, sound and video. Slides can show automatically one after another or the presenter can choose when to show the next slide manually.

A slideshow can act as a visual prompt to a person giving a talk or presentation, or it can give more information about the current topic.

The features of presentation software include:

Slide master - controls the presentation’s appearance and keeps all the slides in the same style.
Animations – special effects to keep your audience interested.
Transitions – different ways to change from one slide to the next, eg the current slide dissolves into the next one.
Speaker notes – the presenter can add notes to remind them what to say when each slide is shown. The notes appear on the presenter’s screen but not on the audience’s.

Graphics software

There are three main types of graphics software:

photo-editing
painting
drawing

Some of the basic changes they let you make to an image include:

contrast and brightness adjustment
rotation
cropping (choosing part of the image and getting rid of the rest)
resizing

Photo editing

Photo-editing software is used to edit photos taken with a digital camera or scanned and saved to your computer.

Airbrushing is a technique that features in photo-editing software. It is used by newspapers and magazines, sometimes to cover up skin imperfections, to change eye colour and to make people look slimmer.

Painting

Painting software can create and edit bitmap images. A bitmap is an image made up of individual dots called pixels. Bitmap images lose quality when their size is increased. If you increase the size enough, the image looks as if it is made up of little squares. These are pixels.

Bitmap files lose quality when they are resized

Files with the extensions .bmp, .jpg and .gif are bitmap files.

Drawing

Drawing software creates and edits vector images. Vector images are made up of lines, curves and shapes based on coordinates. An enlarged vector image will not lose quality.