Real World: Adobe Creative Suite 2

Chapter 5. Getting to the Point of Vector Graphics

Unlike raster images, which use bitmaps in a grid of colors known as pixels, vector graphics use mathematical formulas to define the shape of lines and curves. Adobe built an application around vector graphics — Adobe Illustrator, first demonstrated at the January 1987 Macworld Expo. At its heart was the Pen tool — a tool that a designer could use to visually create the same curves described in mathematical formulas.

In the early days of Illustrator and Photoshop (released in 1990), the chasm between such vector programs as Illustrator and pixel programs as Photoshop was huge. Vector paths and pixel images never mixed. To modify a scanned image, you had to work in Photoshop. To set PostScript ...