User Guide

Academic Courseware: Chapter 1

Joyce Ryan

(RIP) usually handles that task. The display adapter in your computer

interprets the image as a bitmap of pixels on your monitor. Some “Paint”

programs like Corel Painter and Adobe® Photoshop® let you import

vector graphics and turn them into bitmaps (“rasterize” them) so they

can be embellished with paint effects. Corel Painter combines the best of

both worlds by letting the artist work with both bitmaps and vector-

based objects.

An image like this one would be impossible to create with vectors.

Understanding bitmaps

Everything in graphics output eventually becomes a bitmap. Bitmap

files are large! They have to be—the computer must keep track of the

color values of every pixel that makes up the image, not just vectors and

attributes. Bitmaps are also resolution-dependent. If you blow up pixels,

they just look more obvious. To make a bitmapped image large and

smooth, you have to have a finer grid of pixels defining the image. For

best results, you must create your image at the correct resolution, or

higher.

A bitmap is a rectangular grid of dots used to describe an image. It has

four basic characteristics:

•Dimension

•Resolution

•Bit depth

• Color model

Vector-based graphics are

easy to resize with no loss of quality.

However, they tend to have a

somewhat flat graphic style to them. If

you want a painterly look, you will

not be satisfied with working only

with vectors.