How Do Vector Graphics Work?

you know how in movies some important person can just walk into a room wave their hand say enhance and they get like this super detailed close-up of the drug kingpins nose hair or whatever well for most of us the experience of trying to enlarge a photo more often results in a blur that looks like a smear of melted rainbow ice cream now we've tried to solve this problem in recent years with digital cameras that capture images with ever higher pixel counts as well as more powerful computers that can process these images more easily but what if that's not good enough and you want something that will still look good when it's blown up to the size of Kim Kardashian's caboose well this is where vector graphics can be extremely helpful since they can be re scaled to be as big or as small as you'd like without any loss of quality but how is that even possible well you see the reason that traditional raster images tend to blur and distort when you resize them is because the image file itself is like a JPEG or a PNG is really just a collection of instructions that tell the computer how many pixels there are what color they should be and where they go so if you take a lower resolution JPEG and try to stretch it out beyond how many pixels are actually defined in the file the computer has to just guess at what the other pixels in the enlarged image would be a very imperfect science that might be okay for something like blowing up a four by six to five by seven for the wall but can result in horrible looking enlargements and the bigger you go the worse it gets vector graphics on the other hand work in a fundamentally different way instead of telling a computer what pixel goes where vector files define images using lines and shapes and their positions relative to each other for example the file might tell the computer I want a line here a triangle here and a curve that then zigzag actly like this in some other place the computer can then render these instructions into a nice-looking smooth lined image each time you enlarge or shrink it a little like a graphics card can render a frame of a video game in any resolution you choose providing your video card can handle it from a set of instructions specifying where things like polygons should go and because these instructions remain exactly the same no matter how large or small the image ends up being vector files have the significant advantage of taking up the same amount of space on your computer's drive so you can end up with an image large enough to look crisp on a highway billboard while still taking up less than a megabyte well gee Linus that sounds fantastic with better quality and smaller file sizes why aren't all images vector great question because vector graphics are defined by lines and polygons they don't have as much granularity as raster images which define graphics pixel by pixel meaning that vector graphics at least currently aren't usually a great choice for photos and other images that are designed to look photorealistic and while there are tools that can vectorize traditional raster images they tend to lose detail during this process because the computer has to guess at how to convert the patterns of pixels into lines and shapes and it's very easy to see the problems with this if you've ever tried to convert something like a photo of a person to vector and because modern screens are raster displays since they're just large arrays of individual pixels vector images need to be rasterized before they can be displayed properly anyway with lots of modern software only having partial support for rasterizing vector graphics think about how you can't resize SVG's in google chrome for example so they're a good option for graphic designers and visual artists trying to design cool-looking logos or somesuch but if you were hoping to upscale all your porn to 8k using vectors then you've got another thing coming shoutout to Pearl Auto for supporting our channel pearl auto makes a set of rearview cameras that fit around your license plate and synch with your smartphone they're quick and easy to install you only need a screw driver to mount a camera frame on your license plate then you just plug in the adapter to your onboard diagnostic port and mount your phone to your dash you can actually operate it with an app that's already available for iOS and Android the camera frame has two HD cameras which give audio and visual alerts to warn you of obstacles in yourway allowing you to switch between normal and wide-angle lenses and even see around corners in day or night it works on any car has a solar powered panel so it stays charged on its own it uses bluetooth technology to connect to your camera without wires and the Pearl app will automatically update to add additional features soon rear view cameras will be mandatory on all new cars in the US not because it's like a fancy-pants feature but because it legitimately improves the safety of the vehicles operation and Pearl Auto has a special offer just for our viewers head over to pro-law TOCOM slash tech quickie to get free two-day shipping if all that sounds pretty darn sweet we've got that linked in the video description thanks for watching guys if you liked the video like it if you disliked it dislike it if you want to check out our other channels boom right over there if you want to comment with a video suggestion right down there and if you want to subscribe and follow then you could do that too if you were so inclined

Channel: Techquickie

Views: 573,822

Keywords: vector graphics, vector images, svg, scalable vector graphics, raster, vector, vectorize, vectorization, rasterize, rasterization, jpg, jpeg, png, enlargements, resolution, sharpness, clarity, image quality

Id: W2xknX3k6FY

Length: 5min 55sec (355 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2016