Vector Graphics Vs. Raster Graphics

Curiosity killed the Cat! Not in my case - I'm looking into something called Vector Graphics.

Vector graphics...AKA geometric modeling or object-oriented graphics. OOG...hehe.
Vector graphics is the use of geometric primitives like points, lines, curves and polygons which are modeled by mathematical equations to represent images.

Vector graphics is the opposite of Raster Graphics. Raster Graphics is representing an image by an array of pixels (also the technique used for rendering photographic images). This mechanism makes images pixelate as you zoom in, as you can see in the picture below.



This pixelation does not happen with vector graphics. Vector graphics files store the lines, shapes and colors that make up an image as mathematical formulas. A vector graphics program uses the mathematical formulas to construct the screen image by building the best quality image possible, given the screen resolution, from the mathematical data. This is why you see the difference between both techniques in the picture above. Vector graphics render themselves using math equations according to the resolution of the image.

So this is an exceedingly brief look at the two techniques. For a complete and detailed description of the PROs and CONs of each see Wikipedia - Vector Graphics

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