Vector Graphics

So today I have been mostly playing with vector graphics. What are they and why have you just spent all afternoon working them out? Vector graphics are a supremely powerful tool and haven't always been around. You see when you take a photo with a camera it maps each pixel with a colour. This is not so for vector graphics. With vector graphics the whole image is defined as a series of coloured contours, in effect the picture is made up of defined shapes (not lots of dots).

The beauty with vector graphics is they are infinitely scalable. You must have seen someone zoom in to a photo on a computer just to see a series of blocky pixels. Not so in vector graphics, as the image is defined not per pixel, so no matter how much you zoom in or out the picture quality remains the same.

This is not great for photos but check out this picture of a holly sprig I whipped off.

Of course those keen eyed will notice that I've pretty much cheated and replaced the image with a gif and pasted the background colour into the file. So to prove it here's the actual vector graphic.

Not only that it was also a layered image, check it out!

So why all the holly? That should be obvious soon!