Wednesday, August 8, 2012

The Basics of Illustrator

About Adobe Illustrator

Illustrator is a vector drawing program used to create such things as logos, illustrations, maps, infographics, charts, comics, diagrams and more!  Underlying the shapes and lines of the illustration (the vector image) that we see are mathematical equations.  Since this image is based on mathematical equations we can scale it to whatever size we wish without loosing resolution.

The opposite of a vector image would be a bitmap image, also known as a raster image.  These images are formed through grids of dots (pixels).  The image is created through pixels of color.  The more pixels the image has the higher the resolution.  Images with fewer pixels are low resolution.    

 So, now that we have clarified the differences when do we know what type of image we should use?  What are the advantages of creating a vector image over a raster image?  


A few of the main advantages of Vector images are as follows:
  • can make larger without loosing resolution
  • smaller file size
  • great for logos, infographics, charts, "cartoony" images


Some of the disadvantages of Vector images are as follows:
  • images do not look photorealistic
  • images tend to look flat and "cartoony

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