Bitmap Graphics

• Bitmap graphics are created and edited in paint-type graphics programs, such as Adobe Photoshop. Bitmaps are also the graphic type created by scanners and digital cameras. Bitmaps create images by combining millions of colored dots, which is crucial to producing the intricate color gradations and shading in photographs. The density of the dots, the dots per inch, or dpi, measures the image's resolution. A drawback to bitmap images is that to enlarge them, computers must increase the space between the dots, often degrading the image quality.
  
  

Vector Graphics

• Vector graphics are created and edited in graphics programs, such as Adobe Illustrator. Vector images consist of a series of vectors, or lines and shapes drawn mathematically. Rather than combining dots, computers create vector images by executing millions of calculations. This graphic type is ideal for creating drawings but doesn't reproduce photographs well.Vector graphics can be resized without degrading image quality. The computer resizes the graphic by recalculating the vectors. However, vector graphics aren't widely supported by Web browsers.
  
  

Bitmap Web Graphics

• Web browsers support three bitmap image formats: JPEP, GIF and PNG. Nowadays, however, most designers use the new PNG format in place of the older, less versatile GIF format. Again, to reproduce photographs accurately on the Internet or in any other computer application requires a bitmap format. In addition, bitmap images are much easier to deploy in Web pages than vector formats. The two predominate vector formats, Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) and Illustrator's AI format, aren't supported by any Web browsers.
  
  

Vector Web Graphics

• The only vector graphic format supported on the Web is SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics. Rather than an actual graphic format, SVG is a text-based graphics language. Many browsers require an SVG plugin, or viewer, to display the graphic. While SVG is highly versatile and supports several features unavailable in bitmap graphics, such as animation and end-user scalability, they require a high level of skill to deploy. Graphics program manufacturers such as Adobe have developed several tools to help designers deploy SVG graphics on the Internet, and, most likely, SVG or some other similar vector graphics format represents the future of Web graphics. As of the date of publication, though, using vector graphics in Web pages requires Web programming skills.