Adobe INDESIGN 2.0 - USING HELP Help Manual page 219

Adobe InDesign Help
Using Help | Contents |
Importing, Exporting,
and Managing Graphics
About vector graphics and bitmap images
Computer graphics fall into two main categories—vector graphics and bitmap images.
Vector graphics are made of lines and curves defined by mathematical objects called
vectors. You can freely resize or magnify vector graphics without losing sharpness,
because they are resolution-independent—the number of pixels used to display a vector
graphic is determined by the resolution of the monitor or printer, not by the graphic itself.
This is because a vector graphic is not converted to pixels until it is displayed or printed.
The objects you create using the drawing tools in the InDesign toolbox are examples of
vector graphics.
Bitmap images, also called raster images, are composed of small squares, known as pixels,
that lie on grids (also known as a bitmaps or rasters). Bitmap images are the most common
electronic medium for such continuous-tone images as photographs or images created in
painting programs like Adobe Photoshop. Bitmap images are resolution-dependent—that
is, they represent a fixed number of pixels. As a result, they can lose detail and appear
jagged if they are scaled on-screen or if they are printed at a higher resolution than they
were created for. Bitmap images often require large amounts of storage space, and often
need to be compressed to keep file sizes down. You compress an image file in its original
application before you import it into InDesign.
You can store computer graphics as bitmap images, vector graphics, or a combination of
both, depending on the graphics file format.
Resolution for bitmap images
Resolution is the number of dots or pixels per linear unit used in the reproduction of
artwork and images.
Using Help | Contents |
Importing, Exporting, and Managing Graphics
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