The SVG 1.1 specification also describes 16 filter primitives that make it possible to obtain very complex objects as well as highly realistic effects. SVG files can be mass-generated or modified in almost any way without human intervention. Last but not least, creating or processing “a series of commands” is a task that can be delegated to a computer program easily and efficiently. A clean vector image (left) compared to a raster image (right) pixilated when expanded.Īnother big plus of vector image files is that, because they are sequences of instructions, the size of the image does not affect that of the file, saving both disk space and download time on slow connections. The vector one, on the left, is much crisper than the other, isn't it?įigure 1. For an example, take a look at Figure 1, which shows two zoomed versions of the same drawing side by side, a raster drawing and a vector drawing. Vector graphics can be zoomed, shrunk or rotated as much as you wish or as many times as you wish without any degradation, even when printed.

More exactly, although it is still (obviously) impossible to see an ultra-crisp image on a low-resolution monitor or printer, a vector graphic has no intrinsic resolution nor limits to it. The first and main benefit of this alternative method is being completely separate from the capabilities of the physical display, be it a computer monitor or a piece of paper. The grandfather of vectorial formats is PostScript.

Instead, a vector graphics file contains a series of pseudo-mathematical instructions-such as draw a straight line from this to that coordinate, create a rectangle of this size, rotate it 47 degrees clockwise or fill it with red.

A bitmap or raster graphic is, ignoring compression and other optimization techniques, simply one long list of all the pixels constituting an image, each one described in as much detail as possible-exact color, transparency and so on. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an open W3C standard for describing two-dimensional graphics in a different way than traditional computer images, which are all bitmaps of some kind.

Vector drawing inkscape