A vector outline is made up of one or more straight or curved segments. The beginning and end of each segment is marked by anchor points, which work like pins holding string in place.
Vector Object
A vector object is self-contained, with its own properties such as shape, outline, colour, size and position on screen. This means that an individual object’s properties can be changed and moved repeatedly without losing any clarity or definition and without affecting other objects in the illustration. These aspects of vector graphics make them ideal for illustration and design processes which require the creation and manipulation of individual objects.
Vector artwork is ideal for any kind of reproduction whether in print or router cutting, most reproduction software can open or import vectors from PDF/EPS which are native formats of Adobe Illustrator.
Straight and Curved
A vector outline is made up of one or more straight or curved segments. The beginning and end of each segment is marked by anchor points, which work like pins holding string in place.
You change the shape of a path by editing its anchor points. Paths can have two kinds of anchor points, a corner point and a smooth point. You can draw a path using any combination of corner and smooth points.
Anchors
A corner point can connect any two straight or curved segments, while a smooth point always connects two curved segments. There are many ways of accomplishing this but the most popular method is Bézier Curve, where the points have handles to aid the user to gain the proper arc or spline. At a smooth point, path segments are connected as continuous curves which you can control by dragging the handles which appear at the anchor points when selected.
Fill and Stroke
The vector object can be comprised of a Fill and/or a Stroke with their own values which are independent of Resolution which means that they display or print to the maximum resolution of an output device. Vector images are also best for giving sharper lines and therefore need less printing resources.
Because computer monitors represent images by displaying them on a grid, both vector and bitmap images are displayed as pixels on-screen. The process of changing a vector graphic to a bitmap image is called rasterization.
