If you have ever worked on any graphic designing project then you must have come across the term vector art file. You will find that whether your designer is working on logo designing or on cloth graphics they will suggest you to use vector art file.
Now, you must be thinking that how is it different from other art files and why everybody suggest using these files?
Different types of files
When working on electronic image you will basically get two types of files. One is vector graphics and the other is raster graphics that is mainly pixel based.
For creating vector graphics points, shapes, lines and curves are based on mathematical formulas. Then these elements of the design are filled with colors, tints, blends or gradients. The lines are also given different attributes making then thick or bold. Like this the illustration is completed. Different file extensions of vector graphics are AI and EPS.
In raster graphics, pixels that are small dots are used for creating the overall image. It is also known as bitmap file. When the images of raster graphics are magnified the pixels can be found. File extension of raster graphics are JPEG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF.
Benefits of using a vector art file
Now, let’s find out the benefit of using a vector art file over a raster art file.
The first benefit is of course that in vector art file the resolution is independent of the size of the artwork. You can scale the image to any size, whether for the business card or for a huge bill board!
Now, while using a bitmap image the main challenge is that every time you change the size of the image some information is lost. While again using the image computer redraws the altered image. Gradually you will find that the quality of the image is not same neither it has the same finish as it had earlier. When the size of a JPEG image is doubled it becomes blurry and the quality of the image also deteriorates.
However, you will not face such problem with a vector art file image as it is based on mathematical formulas. You can double it or triple it without doing any harm to the quality of the image. You can also change color of any particular section of vector image without changing the other sections of the image.
You can enlarge a vector image and the sharpness of the image will not be affected, but this is not possible in case of bitmap image.
Apart from that a vector file takes much less space than the bitmap files. In the vector image the information stored is less than the bitmap image and hence the file sizes are less.
If you have a vector file then you can easily get it converted into bitmap image file. However, this is not possible in case of a bitmap image. You have to recreate the bitmap file with the help of some vector application.
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