File Extensions and Vector/Raster Images

Vector Images and Raster Images

What is a Vector/Raster image?
Vector images come under the file extensions PSD, WMF, FLA and AI. The main difference between vector images and raster images is that vector images can be lown up to any proportion and still retain a high quality image, wheras a raster image canot retain it's quality if it is blown up in size. A raster image is built using pixels conatining colours, but once the size changes the pixels cannont retain their appearance and the quality drops. A vector image is made up of paths each with a mathmatical forula, regardless of size the quality is unnaffected because the formulas dictate how the image is rendered.

A raster image would be perfect for a photograph because of how much colour the pixels can retain, a vector image wouldn't be suitable as a photograph because it can't display hte qualities of a photograph. A vector image would however would suit a corporate logo as it could be resized to fit onto a business car and then blown up to suite a bill board.

File Extensions
Whenever you save a document or download something the file will always have an extension, what extension is used depends on what type of file you download or what program you used to create said document. There are many different types, below you can see some of the extensions for either a Vector or Raster image.

Vector Extensions:
- .PSD Is a file with layered images used in Adobe Photoshop, the extension allows you to eddit the layers even after saving.

- .WMF Is a file extension for a graphics file used with Microsoft Windows, WMF files can contain both vector and bitmap image information.

- .FLA Is a file extension used by Adobe flash applications, these files store movies or animation.

- .AI Is a file extension used by Adobe Illustrator to save files created in this program. Commonly .AI files store logos.

Raster Extensions:
- .BMP Files or Bitmaps are a raster graphic format, .BMP format stores colour data without compression ensuring a high quality and crips image, the files however are quite large.

- .GIF Files are often an animated raster graphics file, the files are also compresses so they're quite small.

- .TIFF Files are used for storing high quality raster graphics, the format supports lossless compression so photos/images don't use as much space and because of this quality will not be comprimised.

- .JPG Files are used to save images in a compressed format, it is commonly used for storing photographs.