Vector graphics use points, lines, curves and shapes instead of just straight lines and pixels to represent images in computer graphics. Each point, line, curve or shape can be assigned a colour, thickness, shape and fill. This will not affect the size of the image in any substantial way meaning that the image will be better quality but not take up a lot of space. As Vector graphics are mathematically created, the program that is used to create them save instructions on how the image should be drawn instead of what it should look like. Vector images can be scaled up to a massive image or scaled down to a tiny image and not lose quality. This is why vector images are appropriate for use on items such as advertising boards. However, in order for the quality to remain the same, Vector graphics must be created relatively simply. These graphics will therefore have a certain look no matter how detailed they are. CorelDraw and AutoCAD are examples of Vector drawing packages.
Bitmap graphics are the most common graphic format used on the web. Bitmap graphics are composed of tiny particles called pixels which each contain colour information. As these pixels are so small, an image can be made up of hundreds of thousands of pixels. They are created whenever an image is taken using a digital camera or scanned. Bitmap graphics are usually large as the computer must store each pixel separately and a single image could contain thousands of pixels. If the user wanted to resize a bitmap image they would find that the image would lose quality and become pixelated as its compression is lossy. As there are hundreds of thousands of pixels in a single image, Bitmap files are quite large in comparison with other files such as JPEG or GIF. Microsoft Paint would be an example of a Bitmap drawing package. Apart from Flash, every image seen on the internet is a Bitmap.
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