Photoshop is very well known for its powerful bitmap image editing capabilities. Although not as well known, Photoshop’s drawing and vector graphics tools are no less important.

 

Just to review, a bitmap image is composed of an array of pixel values that is mapped to an x, y coordinate system. Vector graphics, on the other hand, are lines, curves, and shapes that are described mathematically. They can be manipulated and scaled easily without a loss in quality, because re-sampling is not involved. When a vector graphic is manipulated, the underlying mathematical vectors are adjusted appropriately (so there is no guessing at pixel values when the size is changed.)

 

When it is time for a vector graphic to become a bitmap image, it must be rasterized. This is the process of converting the mathematically described image into an array of mapped pixel values. A vector graphic must be rasterized before you can apply many of Photoshop’s editing features to it.

 

In this lesson you will learn more about the vector graphics tools. You will learn how to use the shape tools, how to work with custom shapes, how to use the pen tools, and how to manipulate paths.