{"id":207,"date":"2011-01-18T21:18:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-18T21:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/?p=207"},"modified":"2011-01-19T23:46:21","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T23:46:21","slug":"what-vector-art-is-and-isnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/what-vector-art-is-and-isnt\/","title":{"rendered":"What Vector Art IS and ISN’T!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think one of the biggest areas of confusion in the Apparel Decorating Industry is a clear definition of what Vector Art really is and how it is used to print on apparel.\u00a0 Unfortunately Vector Art is a term that has been commoditized the way Kleenex is used to describe all brands of facial tissue.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately vector art is a discipline on to itself and many times consumers will request a piece of art be \u201cvectorized\u201d when the process of recreating a piece of art in vector format is entirely inappropriate.<\/p>\n

This conversation could easily get very technical but the point is not to numb you into submission with fancy terms and lofty jargon. Rather it is to try an help you better understand what can and cannot be done with vector art.<\/p>\n

To go further let\u2019s discuss the image below. This is very typical of art Qdigitizing will receive with instructions that go something like this, \u201cPlease vectorize this image so I can print on t-shirts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first and most important thing to remember is that designs submitted as JPG, BMP, TIFF, GIF and others are RASTER images (designs made up of colored DOTS) not VECTOR images.\u00a0 (Designs made up of solid lines) You might be saying, \u201cWell, that is why I want you to vectorize it for me.\u201d\u00a0 Unfortunately it is not nearly that simple and to confuse things what you probably really want is not vector art at all.\u00a0 What you really want are color separations from the raster image.<\/p>\n

This is where using a term like vector art is confusing.\u00a0 If you are looking to print this design on a shirt you most likely do not want vector art.\u00a0 You want your art company to take this file and separate it into a manageable number of layers (color separations) so a screen printer can create screens to print the job for you.<\/p>\n

Your art company can do this for you using highly sophisticated software but it depends on ONE CRITICAL FACTOR.\u00a0 The original image must be of high enough resolution to support increasing the size of the image to the required print size.\u00a0 It is virtually impossible for any art company to add resolution to an image.\u00a0 The design above is created by the illusion of millions of colored dots placed close together.\u00a0 This forms the illusion of all of the colors.\u00a0 If we simply enlarge the image the dots will spread out and the image will begin to fall apart.<\/p>\n

Herein lies the confusion.\u00a0 Customers will use the term \u201cvectoring\u201d when what they really mean is \u201cwe want you to make this design bigger and increase the resolution so we can print it.\u201d\u00a0 Unfortunately that cannot be done without completely re-drawing the design.\u00a0 To further complicate matters a design like this (for many reasons) cannot simply be \u201credrawn\u201d in a program like Adobe Illustrator.\u00a0 To faithfully recreate this image the art would need to be redrawn by hand by\u00a0a talented artist who would spend hours and hours recreating the image before creating a digital version.\u00a0 There are of course exceptions to this rule but the details get tedious and involved.<\/p>\n

If your customer comes to you and wants this image printed on a t-shirt you must ask your customer to provide you with the source files.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t have them the chances are (whether you use Qdigitizing or one of our competitors) you will not be able to get the design printed without a significant cost to recreate (not simply color separate) the art for you.<\/p>\n

Finally, it should be understood it is virtually impossible to redraw an image like this in a vector art program like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.\u00a0 While an artist can come close, the finished project will not have the \u201csoft\u201d feel of the original.\u00a0 Vector programs by their very nature create hard lines.\u00a0 Those lines can be manipulated with effects but those effects typically do not duplicate the hand of a human artist.<\/p>\n

Vector programs like Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw\u00a0have their place and a talented artist can do amazing things with these applications.\u00a0 But duplicating a RASTER image file like the one above (or a photograph!) is not what these programs are for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I understand what I am writing may more\u00a0questions than it answers.\u00a0 That is to be expected.\u00a0 Art is a complicated issue and fully understand all of the ins and outs can take years.\u00a0 I still lern something new almost every single day.\u00a0\u00a0 I will continue to answer\u00a0your questions through this blog.\u00a0 If any of you out there have specific questions please do not be shy to ask.\u00a0 Any question presented will be answered to the best of my ability.\u00a0 If you do not want to have a public conversation simply email me at steve.freeman@qdigitizing.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think one of the biggest areas of confusion in the Apparel Decorating Industry is a clear definition of what<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[37,40,36,39,35,38],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embroidery-digitizing","tag-bit-map","tag-color-separations","tag-raster-art","tag-screen-print","tag-vector-art","tag-vector-lines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qdigitizing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}