Vector and Bitmap Graphics

Vector graphics

A vector graphic is how a digital image is created through sequences of commands or mathematical equations that put lines and shapes in either two or three dimensions. Vector image files are easier to modify than raster image graphics. Very big advantage of vector image is that it has small file size and it can be rescaled into any shape without losing its original quality i.e. blurring out, pixilation etc. However, vector graphics also has some disadvantages that may appear in your image loading much slower because these types of graphics take longer time to load and you cannot use vector graphics for photographs because they aren’t as detailed.

Bitmap / Raster graphics

Bitmap images are frequently referred to raster images which are presented by rectangle grids of pixels. This type of image stores a lot of information in and therefore results in a big file size. The bitmap / raster images are frequently used and because of that you don’t need very expensive hardware to run them. Their huge advantage is that they are very good quality images and look very well detailed and realistic. However, their disadvantage is that they can’t be resized because they pixelate very and therefore loose their image quality.

Comparison

 At this point we have looked at both advantages and disadvantages of vector and raster graphics. Vector graphics may be used on websites as images because they are optimized and have small file size and therefore will take less time to download the image and finally the website. On the other hand raster graphics due to its huge file size aren’t that good material for websites mainly because of their huge file size.

	Bitmap graphics	Vector graphics
What are they made up of?	Pixels of different colours	Objects
What can be edited?	Individual pixels	Individual objects
What is the file size?	Large, as the computer stores details of every pixel	Small, as the computer stores details of objects, which do not require much memory
What happens when they are resized?	They lose quality	They do not lose quality
How real do they look?	Real	Not real (many of them look like cartoon images)
Native formats that the software can read	.bmp	.svg
Common file formats	.bmp, .dib, jpeg, gif, tiff, .png	.cgm, .svg, .odg, .eps, .xml