Here are the two major 2D graphic types bitmap and vector discussed in layman’s terms. Why in layman’s terms? Well, not all people are technically inclined in graphics, yet almost everyone have used them. To help people understand how these types behave, they must be informed the basics but in simple terms.
Bitmap
Bitmap image also know as raster image is the type commonly used in almost anywhere. This type of image is made of pixels arranged in a grid. Pixels are a tiny dot of individual colors that makes up an image which can be seen on a computer monitor screen. Bitmaps are dependent on resolution which make it hard to increase or decrease the size of a picture without losing its quality. It is impossible to re-size an image using a graphics editing software without visual changes. For picture editors, resizing to a smaller size will not be a problem in fact it could increase the picture quality, but resizing to a larger size than the original is a big mess as the image will become jagged or blurry. Resizing through the use of graphics software is also commonly called by editors as scaling.
Vector
Vector graphics or image is made up of scalable or re-sizable objects. The objects usually made up of shapes and has their own characteristics. The basic characteristics are its color, fill and outline. Each piece of object can be re-sized without any change. These graphic types are resolution independent, meaning they can be re-size smaller or larger and still visually look the same. Vector graphics cannot render a photo realistic image. Although there are improvements in vector technology that can create somewhat realistic image, but the result is still a bit far from reality.
Conversion
Vector can be converted into any other image types perfectly. It can retain the visual quality of an image whenever an image is converted from vector graphic into another image file type. But we cannot do the same with bitmap graphic. However, there are softwares can do the trick of converting from bitmap to vector. But still the resulting graphic looks totally different.
