How vector graphics are created

Drawing & painting - pens & brushes - vectors & pixels


In the world of computers generally, the word 'drawing' is used to refer to producing a new picture in vector graphics, 'painting' for producing pixels: so traditionally a 'drawing' programme produces vectors, a 'painting' programme produces pixels.

- although now programmes like Photoshop have sophisticated vector tools, and Canvas combines the two on equal terms, as indeed ClarisWorks/AppleWorks has always done in its own humble way.

In the physical world, I think most people would agree that you draw with a pen or pencil and paint with a brush - or a knife, or a spray-can, or your fingers, or your toes: so the more literally-minded of us might expect a computer pen to produce vectors and a brush to produce pixels.

But when all this stuff was evolving on computers at such a dynamic speed in the 1980s and '90s, the programmers didn't feel themselves bound by old associations like that, so you can find a brush which produces vectors in a drawing programme, and a pencil which produces pixels in a painting programme.

The whole thing is only a loose metaphor anyway, of course ...

And perhaps it's worth mentioning about the stylus you use with a graphics tablet: the question whether it functions as a pen or a brush, is dependent not on the hardware, but on the software - which programme you're in and which tool is selected ...