Vector Graphics - Understanding What A Vector Is

Another word for a scalable graphic design, is a 'vector'

A vector graphic is made up of constructed shapes, colours, and placement that form together to make a picture, and are 'scalable' - rather than being a grid of pixels that make up a bitmap graphic. Examples of vector graphic formats are PICT, EPS, and WMF as well as PostScript and TrueType fonts.

Vector graphics in their original format are very easy to alter; in fact anything about the graphic can be changed including colours. Vector graphic design formats allow you to open a previously saved file, change it, and then save it again - following this you can open the file an unlimited number of times, change it, and then save it.

This feature of vector graphics is the reason why they are used by professional design firms to produce graphics that are suitable for web and print, and also printing companies to produce an exceptionally high quality print; the vector file type most typically requested by printing companies is called .EPS - which is short for Encapsulated Post Script.

The industry standard design software used for creating scalable graphic designs that are suitable for print as well as web is Adobe Illustrator, this sophisticated software creates graphics in vector format, and then from these vector images a whole multitude of other file types can be created without changing the scalable attributes of the vector file (the master file).

Examples of bitmap graphics that can be created from an original vector image are GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, XBM, BMP, and PCX; these images types are made up of a group of tiny squares (called pixels), and once created they cannot be altered in the same way that a vector image can. In addition any attempts to rescale a bitmap image will result in blurring and loss of quality.

Likewise it is impossible to take a bitmap image, and turn it into a vector image, and the only way to produce a vector image from a bitmap is to trace and redraw the image from scratch in Adobe Illustrator to create the scalable version.

A common misconception is that lower grade design software, such as Paint Shop Pro, is able to produce scalable/high quality print graphics - Paint Shop Pro and similar low cost software products whilst able to create vector graphics, cannot output print quality graphics that a professional printing company will be able to use.

The vector images they create cannot be opened by the software used by print professionals; i.e. Adobe Illustrator cannot open vector graphics created by Paint Shop Pro. Also Paint Shop Pro and similar, are unable to open scalable graphics created by Adobe Illustrator.