Photoshop, who says is not a vector graphics allowing software… it supports vector graphics as well. Now what is vector graphic?

An image that is drawn by the help of paths or simply lines, circles & other basic shapes. On the other hand we also have bitmap images. Bitmap images are also known as raster images. These are normally drawn with the help of a grid of pixels. Photoshop supports both vector as well bitmap.

In the above image you can notice the pixels as marked by the black circles. The smaller design shows the normal size where as the larger one is the zoomed in one. The problem with bitmaps is they are resolution dependent. We normally refer to resolution in dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels per inch).

Now when working with large posters, or may be banners. Or high quality things. If a bitmap is enlarged, it looses its quality. And gets blurred which leads to a bad impression of the hard work a designer did on it. This is not the case with vector. A vector image drawn on an image size of 100*100 or even less can be scaled up to the size of a banner of size 10000*10000 without the loss of quality. And they are resolution independent. But they also have a problem they are not suitable for photo realistic things. A photograph taken from a camera or scanned from a scanner cannot be saved as a vector unless conversion software is used. The image below shows a small vector circle which is enlarged to the bigger circle and as shown there is no loss of quality.

Vector graphics are more like cartoons. Vector images can be converted to bitmap images, the process is called rasterizing. But nevertheless textures can be given to vectors to make them give a photo realistic look. So if you’re designing a poster or banner try working with a vector. But if your working with reality then bitmaps the answer. But remember this is not a hard and fast rule; it depends on your situations, your work and your mind.