A, say, logo positioned in this way will look good on the screen but – what is more important – it will always be printed in the best available quality. I recommend using EMF files for any vector graphics elements placed in Microsoft Office documents (Word, PowerPoint etc.). Rarely used on an everyday basis and unappreciated. WMF/EMF (Windows MetaFile/Enhanced MetaFile) A Microsoft-created graphics file format containing both bitmaps and vectors. Despite that it is still not much popular. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) A vector file format created with the Internet in mind and supported by Internet browsers (some require that an add-on be installed). The most recent versions of the programs can import files of their “competitor”. Visual identification elements, such as logos, are best to be saved in this format.ĪI and CDR Frequent vector files created by two most popular vector graphics programs, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw respectively. Vector file formatsĮPS (Encapsulated PostScript) A universal format supported by most vector graphics programs. BMP files are unnecessarily large and additionally, they are not displayed by all Internet browsers. a list of pixels with their colours being defined and with minimum compression. Instead, they contain much more additional information (paths, alpha channels, comments) that is used by printing devices.īMP (BitMaP) The basic raster format, which is now rarely used. As opposed to JPG, only lossless compression is used in TIF files, which means their sizes are usually much larger. TIF/TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) A format used basically only for printing. Most liked by the creators of web pages because of its intelligent transparency handling: you can round off the edges meeting the background and use such effects as shadows. From historical perspective, it is a successor of the GIF format. PNG (Portable Network Graphics) The third of the “Internet” bitmap image formats, which is still relatively not much popular. One of the colours in the palette of a GIF file can be transparent, which is why it is possible to see the background in selected places of the rectangular graphic area.
#Raster data format full#
256, whereas JPG supports a full 24-bit palette (16.7 m colours). The reason for that is the limited number of colours, i.e. As opposed to JPG, it is rather not used to save photos but graphics/illustrations. GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) A very well-known format is also GIF. JPG is most commonly used on web pages (along with GIF and PNG). When you save a JPG file you can select a compression level by adjusting the file quality to file size ratio. JPG/JPEG (acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group which created the format) JPG/JPEG is the most popular raster graphic file format using effective compression algorithms which enable you to achieve a small file size without quality loss (or with acceptable quality loss). The changing of a bitmap into vectors is called vectorisation or digitalisation. The reverse is very complicated and not always possible. You can easily get a raster file from a vector file. Vector formats are the best for logos: such a file may be used both on a business card and on a billboard. That is why projects delivered in a vector form can be freely scaled (also up) with no harm to their quality. On the other hand, vector graphics contains shapes composed of curves (vectors) and fillings. In order to use raster graphics for high quality printouts you need very high resolutions (dimensions) of even several thousands of pixels. While you are scaling up a bitmap on the screen (zooming) you sooner or later see individual pixels, being large one-colour squares. You can only scale down (reduction in size) raster graphics and not lose quality. What we save as a bitmap are all photographic images and, for instance, files displayed on web pages (with the exception of Flash animations, which may combine both raster and vector elements). Every shape is composed of thousands of pixels which is why we cannot see individual squares while looking at a bitmap image. vectorsīitmap ( raster) graphic file is a rectangular area composed of pixels, i.e. In this article, I explain in short the difference between bitmaps and vectors, talk about the characteristics of given file formats and suggest when to use which formats. They also often specify minimum bitmap dimensions or resolutions which are expressed in pixels. They need vector files one time and raster files another time and they usually specify acceptable formats in the form of three-letter extensions. Interactive agencies, advertising agencies, media houses, printing houses and other providers require that marketers deliver to them graphic materials in various forms. vector graphics and graphic file formats 29-04-2011, Category Other
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