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• Inkscape is an open source vector editor that uses SVG as its native format. It can read and write SVG flawlessly and can export EPS. The user interface is not as polished as some other solutions, but once learned, Inkscape is a very powerful tool. It is also totally free and actively developed, so we recommend it highly.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader is a free PDF viewer by Adobe. It is available on all major platforms and is easy to use. It is the recommended tool for viewing and printing Vector Magic's output.
• Ghostview is a free PS/EPS viewer based on Ghostscript. Ghostscript is a very complete and high-quality PS/EPS parser that is capable of rasterizing most PS/EPS files. The user interface is not for the faint of heart.

• Adobe Illustrator is a vector editor that can read and write EPS, AI, PDF, SVG, and many other formats. Illustrator is the most widely-used vector editor and many other tools have emulated its user interface. Illustrator may be purchased directly from Adobe as a stand-alone product, or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite.
• CorelDRAW is a vector editor that can read and write EPS, AI, PDF, SVG and many other formats. CorelDRAW is the second most widely-used vector editor on the market after Adobe Illustrator. CorelDRAW may be purchased directly from Corel on the Corel Online Store.
• Xara Xtreme is a vector editor with good support for the PDF and AI formats and limited support for the EPS and CDR formats. Xara Xtreme, which is less expensive than Illustrator or CorelDRAW, may be purchased directly from Xara on the Xara online store.

These are listed for your reference and inclusion in this list does not constitute an endorsement by Vector Magic.

There is an extremely large number of different bitmap formats. Some of the most common include: JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF. Broadly speaking, they fall into two categories:

1. Lossy image formats (e.g., JPEG) have smaller file sizes but do not store a perfect copy of the image. They are best suited to photographs and other images where perfect accuracy is not important. They are also commonly used on the web to save bandwidth.
2. Lossless image formats (e.g., PNG, BMP, and TIFF) store an exact pixel-by-pixel representation of the image, but require more space. They are more suitable for things like logos. Arguably the best of these formats is PNG, which is Vector Magic's recommended bitmap format for logos. It is widely supported and has very good compression.

Some specific comments on these formats:

• JPEG/JPG - One of the most widely-used image formats is the JPEG format (Joint Photographers' Expert Group). This format has excellent compression characteristics and has the nice feature that the user may specify what level of compression they desire, trading off fidelity for file size.

  We do not recommend using JPEG files for rasterized vector art, as the compression artifacts substantially degrade the quality of the image near edges.

• PNG - The best of the lossless image formats is called PNG (Portable Network Graphics). This format is widely supported by web browsers and image viewers/editors.

  Vector Magic recommends using the PNG format when storing logos as bitmaps.

• BMP - There are actually several BMP formats (BitMaP). Windows and Macintosh have their own formats, both of which are called BMP. Most modern image editing tools are able to read both.

  In any case, all of the variants of BMP should be avoided when possible, as they use little to no compression and consequently have unnecessarily large file sizes.

• TIFF/TIF - This format (Tagged Image File Format) is used to store raw bitmap data by some programs and devices such as scanners. This format comes in a compressed and an uncompressed variant. The former is comparable to PNG, while the latter is more like BMP.

  Using the uncompressed variant is not advised.

Adobe Formats

• EPS - Adobe's EPS format (Encapsulated PostScript) is perhaps the most common vector image format. It is the standard interchange format in the print industry. It is widely supported as an export format, but due to the complexity of the full format specification, not all programs that claim to support EPS are able to import all variants of it. Adobe Illustrator and recent versions of CorelDRAW have very good support for reading and writing EPS. Ghostview can read it very well but does not have any editing capabilities. Inkscape can only export it.
• AI - The native format of Adobe Illustrator is the AI format (Adobe Illustrator), a modified version of the older EPS format. The AI format is fairly widely supported, but is less ubiquitous than the EPS format, and most programs that read AI can also read EPS.
• PDF - Adobe's PDF format (Portable Document Format) is very widely used as a general purpose platform-independent document format. And while it is not exclusively used as such, it is also a very good vector image format. Adobe gives away the Acrobat PDF reader, but sells the tools required to create PDF files (third party tools that perform the same task are also for sale). Those tools work with any program that is able to print. Support for reading and editing PDF files is much more limited.

Other Formats

• SVG - The W3C standard vector image format is called SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). Inkscape and recent versions of Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW have good support for reading and writing SVG. Further information on the SVG format may be found on the official SVG website. We also recommend this convenient list of vector editors and viewers that support SVG.

There are numerous other vector formats: CDR is the CorelDRAW native format and XAR is the Xara Xtreme native format, to name a couple.

Uses for vector images

There are fundamentally two different ways in which something gets printed on paper or clothes:

1. Rasterized printing - there are many printing techniques that fall under this general category. While the quality and feel of the end result may differ between them, it boils down to printing pixels on either paper or clothes. The most common printer types that most consumers are familiar with such as inkjet and laser printers fall into this category. There are even industrial inkjet style printers that can print on clothes.

   Even though the printing is fundamentally done with pixels, it still makes sense to use vector images as the input as they allow taking full advantage of the printer's resolution (see below).

2. Shape printing - again, there are many printing techniques that fall under this general category. While the quality and feel of the end result may differ between them, it boils down to cutting or extruding the shapes of the input vector image in some base material (silk screens, copper plates, other) that is then used to transfer the relevant color to the right place on the end product.

   These processes typically require vector input to work at all - in most cases you can't cut/extrude the base material without the shape definitions used in vector graphics.

Printing has much higher resolution (typically 600 pixels/dots per inch, DPI) than what you see on a computer screen (typically 72 pixels/dots per inc, DPI). This means that while something might show just fine on your screen, it is going to look "grainy" or pixelated when actually printed.

See the Wikipedia articles on textile printing, flexography, screen printing, and digital printing.

There are tens of thousands of custom print shops around the globe. It would not be practical to list even a small fraction of these - for most printing needs we recommend checking your local yellow pages.

There are a number of larger websites that offer different types of printing on clothes. Some of these are:

• Spreadshirt
• Zazzle
• Cafe Press

These are listed for your reference and inclusion in this list does not constitute an endorsement by Vector Magic.

Signs come in all shapes and sizes and many of them are made using some form of vector image original.

While the specific production processes vary, one of them includes cutting the relevant colors from vinyl.

Computer-controlled sewing machines can quickly stitch custom designs onto different kinds of clothing. This process typically requires vector input to work at all - the machine needs to be steered to stitch out the relevant shapes and that can't be done using only pixel based information.

Graphic design is done in many ways with many tools, but the versatility and flexibility of vector images make them a very natural canvas to use when creating different forms of graphics such as logos or drawings.

A lot of the smooth animations and creative art you see in animated content online is done using vector images inside Flash animations.