Comments on: Photoshop mode vs Illustrator mode http://www.definatalie.com/2008/05/20/photoshop-mode-vs-illustrator-mode/ Drawing, body image and being fancy Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:53:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Fergus Gibson http://www.definatalie.com/2008/05/20/photoshop-mode-vs-illustrator-mode/comment-page-1/#comment-5234 Fergus Gibson Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:04:00 +0000 http://www.definatalie.com/?p=92#comment-5234 I'm responding to a pretty old article here, but I thought I'd say that I'm rather surprised that some people find Illustrator's use of vector instead of raster graphics. You maybe know these terms, the correct terms for the difference between Illustrator "wires" and Photoshop "pixels" and are trying to keep it simple. I'm not sure. I tend to think not explaining and using the proper terms actually leaves out valuable knowledge. If they don't know how these things are labelled in the design world, they can't communicate effectively about them. I'd also add that pixels in raster graphics aren't "squished and stretched". In fact pixels are merges in a downsample and new pixels are interpolated into the space created by upscaling. As you say, this leads to substantial quality loss. Logos, for instance, should always be created and provided to the customer as vector graphics because they will be used at many different sizes and resolutions. A quick tip for beginners: if you resize a raster image, always make sure the last thing you do before you save is sharpen the image. This is usually best done using the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop. In this way, you can recover some of the crispness of the lines and contrasts of the raster graphics, things that are always loss in nearly any resize operation. Thank you, Natalie, for opening a discussion and addressing this. It'll definitely help those still learning Adobe Creative Suite and graphic design in general. I’m responding to a pretty old article here, but I thought I’d say that I’m rather surprised that some people find Illustrator’s use of vector instead of raster graphics. You maybe know these terms, the correct terms for the difference between Illustrator “wires” and Photoshop “pixels” and are trying to keep it simple. I’m not sure. I tend to think not explaining and using the proper terms actually leaves out valuable knowledge. If they don’t know how these things are labelled in the design world, they can’t communicate effectively about them.

I’d also add that pixels in raster graphics aren’t “squished and stretched”. In fact pixels are merges in a downsample and new pixels are interpolated into the space created by upscaling. As you say, this leads to substantial quality loss. Logos, for instance, should always be created and provided to the customer as vector graphics because they will be used at many different sizes and resolutions.

A quick tip for beginners: if you resize a raster image, always make sure the last thing you do before you save is sharpen the image. This is usually best done using the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop. In this way, you can recover some of the crispness of the lines and contrasts of the raster graphics, things that are always loss in nearly any resize operation.

Thank you, Natalie, for opening a discussion and addressing this. It’ll definitely help those still learning Adobe Creative Suite and graphic design in general.

]]>