Graphic files and settings

Graphics is the most important aspect of a game, photo or even a cartoon it's everywhere you look in terms of media, but computers use file types to save every image to the computers' hard disk.

The two files which are more common are Bitmap (or raster) and Vector.

What is Bitmap?
Bitmap is a file type which uses the computer to code each individual pixel to its' original colour so doesn't have loss of colour quality. Unfortunately these files can't be expanded as the pixels will also expand which means that the image will pixelate and will look rubbish.

What is a pixel?

Pixels or dots builds the images that you see on a computer monitor or TV, this is why you can see stuff on the PCs or on your TV screen.

What is Vector?

Vector is another file type, but works completely different to Bitmap. Vector uses Mathematical co-ordinates and this gets rid of the problem of pixelation as the co-ordinates don't cause the image to pixelate, these files are usually found in word under clip art.

What is resolution?
Resolution is changeable, but the setting when you first buy a computer is at it's optimum setting (when it's at the best setting), this is true for laptops, but PCs you have to configure it yourself. On modern day laptops there are 5 different resolutions these are 800 X 600, 1024 X 768, 1280 X 720, 1280 X 768 and 1366 X 768. For the more powerful games you'll be aiming for the top resolution because the graphics will withstand the power, but for business only 1024 X 768 would be best. The resolution of a image can be changed for print quality in PPI, the highest quality is 300 PPI, moniter quality is 72 PPI.