Modern computer displays are made up of grid forms of small rectangular cells called picture elements or “pixels”. Most image formats you see on the internet, such as JPEG or GIF’s are represented as pixels; when zoomed in really close they will distort or “pixilate”.
If you have a JPEG of your company logo at a size of 300 x 300 pixels you can expect a decent print size of around 10 to 13 SQ CM. Any larger than that and the image will start to pixilate and look unprofessional. That’s where the use of image to vector comes in.
If you had a big expo coming up and a large part of your exhibition stand has your company’s logo blown up to the size of a 3 meter squared wall;
in its current digital state at just 300 pixels square, it would look incredibly pixelated and unprofessional. With a vector based graphic, you get an image made of lines, curves, points, shapes and polygons that make up the whole, not a collection of different coloured pixels side by side.
Vector images are made up of solid areas of colours or gradients and are becoming more advanced all the time. You can do a lot more with image to vector and bitmap to vector now than you could ten years ago. With today’s vector art tools you can apply bitmapped textures to images giving them photo realistic appearance. This can be used to create soft blends or shading and transparency that was once impossible to achieve with vector imaging programmes.
So back to your exhibition stand, do you want to get your bitmapped logo printed off and blown up to 3 meters square that’ll leave it pixelated? Or do you want to get it converted to a vector image so it looks exactly the same high quality image blown up to 3 meters square as it does at 300 pixels square on your screen?
A Bitmap or Raster image is a dot matrix data structure. It’s a simple way of storing image files on digital media and displaying them either in print or on screen. Raster images are resolution dependant; unlike Vector images, they cannot scale up to a higher resolution without an obvious loss of image quality.
The answer here is “not every time”. However, if you
have a digital image you need to either project or print for a large display
stand; having the file conversion from bitmap to vector is a low cost and
easy way of solving that issue. The advantages of this are; rather than
ordering an expensive rasterised image at a high resolution you can then
enlarge to the size of a double decker bus, you can use a vector image at a
lower cost that can scale to match any display size needed of it, ever.
The advantages of the way Vector images are put together mean it can be
enlarged to any size without loss of quality. As mentioned before there have
been leaps and bounds in the improvement of quality in Vector image quality
including applying bitmapped textures to images giving them photo realistic
appearances, they are still not photo perfect.
EPS: Encapsulated PostScript Ai: Adobe Illustrator
Artwork, a filename extension used by Adobe Illustrator to save artwork.
This file type can be viewed in other image viewers.
JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group, the most common
type of image file. It’s popular due to its ability to retain high image
quality to the naked eye while losing a large percentage of the digital
image quality, this allows file size compression.
TIFF: Tagged Image File Format. TIFF’s are used for
handling numerous images and data. As an example a single TIFF file can be a
container holding a compressed JPEG file for use as a thumbnail and an
uncompressed file of the same image.
GIFF: Graphics Interchange Format. GIF’s are a bitmap
image format usually used for sharp edged line art like company logos.
Limited to 256 colours but very versatile and can be used as for small
animations and low resolution movie clips.
PNG: Portable Network Graphic, another bitmapped image
format that uses lossless data compression.
PSD: Photoshop Document. A PSD file is a stored image
with support for image alteration options available in Adobe Photoshop.
IDD: In Design Document. Same as above but more design
related and with support for design alteration options in Adobe InDesign.
PDF: Portable Document Format, a standard file format
used to store documents independent of application software. As an example a
word document can only be opened on a computer with MS Word installed in it
and a PSD will only open on a computer with Adobe Photoshop installed. If
your client doesn’t have Word or Photoshop they won’t be able to read the
file.
PDF is a standard file format you can save from most
SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics: The formal title for Vector images.
Vector Images are a combination of hand drawn and software
generated. Because Vector graphics are still a relatively new type
of image, software that can accurately create a raster to vector image
doesn’t exist, yet. We do sometimes use software to complete simple tasks
but the majority of artwork created when producing Vector images is done by
our own artists in the studio.
During normal office hours, we aim to get all written
quotes back to you within the hour.
You will be advised of the timescale at the time of the quote.
Depending on the complexity involved in creating your specific vector art,
this can be anything from an hour to 3 days. More complicated jobs might
take longer and we’re always happy to discuss timescales alongside your
requirements while putting a quote together.
Depending on the size of the file either in a zipped
email file or a FTP download link.
You have the option of Sage Pay and PayPal. All payments
must be completed before we commence work.