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.