PhotoShop and Illustrator. In simple terms, what's the difference?

14 years ago

Illustrator is used to create scalable vector graphics.
Photoshop is used to edit raster graphics (the vector tools aren't real vector tools).

It's difficult to explain, really, since Photoshop can create graphics as well.
The only real difference is output.
Illustrator can output vector files that can be infinitely scaled to any size. Billboard...Wall graphics...any size. Photoshop can't. It'll blur like crazy.

How to Understand the Difference Between Illustrator and Photoshop | eHow.com

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George Wright

14 years ago

Thanks BlueSquares,

Can I import a picture into Illustrator and export it at a higher quality. I don't know how to say it technically but in George Speak, can I take a small picture, make it bigger and retain quality of the big picture?

George Wright

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flobaby

14 years ago

Originally Posted by George Wright

Thanks BlueSquares,

Can I import a picture into Illustrator and export it at a higher quality. I don't know how to say it technically but in George Speak, can I take a small picture, make it bigger and retain quality of the big picture?

George Wright

Not in Illustrator and you'll be hard pressed to do it well in Photoshop without a plugin (like Genuine Fractals). The thing is, you can always scale down but going up means you're basically trying to add pixels where there are none so it gets fuzzy.

But Photoshop is the one you'd want to use for photos.

Now, you can use "live trace" in Illustrator to turn a photo into vector art and scale that, that's a possible workaround.

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Hanz

14 years ago

Originally Posted by George Wright

Thanks BlueSquares,

Can I import a picture into Illustrator and export it at a higher quality. I don't know how to say it technically but in George Speak, can I take a small picture, make it bigger and retain quality of the big picture?

George Wright

Hi George, I'm here to help you if you are confused with something regarding either. Basically put, if you want to "illustrate" an image then you shall use Illustrator. Illustrator is the perfect tool for creating vector images. Photoshop on the other hand is better suited to manipulating photographs(raster images) consisting of dots/pixels.
Resolution is irrelevant in Illustrator. You can blow up a vector image to as big as your house and the quality will remain the same.
A photoshop image will not. You cannot retain the quality of a Photoshop image when enlarged.

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MJ Sterling

14 years ago

Yep, vector graphics are actually a maths formula so you can scale them to any size without loss of quality.

Bitmaps (jpegs, gifs, pngs) can't.

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George Wright

14 years ago

Thanks everyone,

I think I get it, however, here is an exact example, in fact two.

1. I import a picture of a person into Illustrator. Say its 500x500 px. Now I blow it up to 2000x2000 can I export it and have it be high quality.

2. I take a screen shot of the Warrior forum. Can I import the screenshot (it's bitmap) and blow it up 300% and keep the quality upon export in another format.

Thanks again,

George Wright

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Hanz

14 years ago

Originally Posted by George Wright

Thanks everyone,

I think I get it, however, here is an exact example, in fact two.

1. I import a picture of a person into Illustrator. Say its 500x500 px. Now I blow it up to 2000x2000 can I export it and have it be high quality.

2. I take a screen shot of the Warrior forum. Can I import the screenshot (it's bitmap) and blow it up 300% and keep the quality upon export in another format.

Thanks again,

George Wright

Anytime you take a photograph and blow it up, the quality will not be retained. It will become more blurry and pixelated. If it's a vector illustration, then you can blow it up 20 billion% and it will stay the same regardless.
Now if you blow it up marginally, it shouldn't be a big deal. But if you blow it up a lot, then it will look hardly presentable.

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Dan C. Rinnert

14 years ago

Originally Posted by George Wright

Thanks everyone,

I think I get it, however, here is an exact example, in fact two.

1. I import a picture of a person into Illustrator. Say its 500x500 px. Now I blow it up to 2000x2000 can I export it and have it be high quality.

No. While you can turn it into vector art as others mentioned, it's not the same thing. There is some vector art that's very photo-realistic, but as a beginner in Illustrator, you're not going to achieve that. There are plenty of Illustrator experts that can't do it.

2. I take a screen shot of the Warrior forum. Can I import the screenshot (it's bitmap) and blow it up 300% and keep the quality upon export in another format.

No. Same reasons as above.

If you want to work with images, such as screenshots and photos, you want Photoshop. If you want to create artwork, such as logos or clip art, you want Illustrator. There are some overlapping tools and features of the two, but their purposes are largely entirely different.

For example, say you draw a circle. As a bitmap image that you might create in Photoshop, it's basically a bunch of tiny little squares. As you blow up the image, the squares become more and more apparent as it takes on what's called a bitmappy look. At a high enough enlargement, it looks blurry and boxy and doesn't look like a very good circle anymore.

If you draw a circle in Illustrator, it's vector art, meaning that it is defined in mathematical curves. As you enlarge it, the mathematical definition of that circle remains the same. So, the circle will always look like a clear well-defined circle no matter how much you enlarge it.

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Hanz 14 years ago

Yep, and the power of Illustrator is incredible. Some pros can create some insane stuff through Illustrator just with the basic pen tool alone. The gradient meshtool also is very handy.
For example, you'd think this here was an actual photo. It's a vector! Fully illustrated! That's photo-realistic vector design!
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koolphoto 14 years ago

I am trying to make this simple, so to some I might be generalizing.

Illustrator is for Graphics. ie: drawings, designing or manipulating type, art etc.

Photoshop is designed for images. Yes, in current versions you can draw, manipulate type ( like bend it) etc. but it was designed for images.

If you want to upsize an photo you do so in Photoshop. If you want to greatly enlarge or modify an image or photo in Photoshop you will tend to lose quality. This is a basic and very rough estimation, but you should be able to upsize or enlarge an image about 1.5x its size and it still should look good. But if you want to enlarge it a lot more then you need something like:

Genuine Fractals is a program made for modifying or enlarging images. It is a plugin for Photoshop.

You can make fairly large enlargements though I have experienced loss of quality. But it looks better then not using it.

Here is the link to learn more: Genuine Fractals 6 Professional Edition - onOne Software

There was a program at one time called, "Live Picture" It was more for compositing images. It actually was an amazing program. I think because you actually never worked on the pixels themselves you could scale it up better then photoshop. It was taken off the market.

I might be wrong, because I don't really want to research all the types of software fully, but to my knowledge today anytime you turn anything into vector art, it is not a photo anymore but a graphic. You won't get blurry or jagged edges when you enlarge, but it won't look like a photo either.
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flobaby

14 years ago

As I mention, you could use Live Trace (a function within Illustrator) to turn it into Vector art, then scale that any way you want. You would likely lose definition on letters though (using the forum screenshot example)

If you have Photoshop, you could download a free trial of Genuine Fractals, it's used for doing exactly that, enlarging for posters, etc.
http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=7

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cringwall

14 years ago

I'm a Fireworks user - I like that program because it can switch between vector and bitmap modes easily. I know it's going to become abandonware by Adobe - but I'll keep using it - it does everything you need for web.

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Dan C. Rinnert 14 years ago

Originally Posted by cringwall

I'm a Fireworks user - I like that program because it can switch between vector and bitmap modes easily. I know it's going to become abandonware by Adobe

Where have you heard that?
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flobaby

14 years ago

But Fireworks can't enlarge anything without the usual degradation, it's just for web design.

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Kelly Verge

14 years ago

George,

If you have a bitmap image (photo or something created in Photoshop, for example) that you want to convert to vector art so that it will be scalable, try VectorMagic.

This program started out as a thesis (and was free for a short time). Now it has a small subscription for the online software or a one-time charge for the desktop version. It's very cool and can be really useful for graphics work.

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DogScout

14 years ago

How are they alike?

Both over priced with DMCA spyware programs embedded in them!

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koolphoto 14 years ago

I was talking to a friend and he told me of another plugin similar to Genuine Fractals by Alien Skin called, Blow Up 2.

Alien Skin Software: Blow Up 2
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George Wright 14 years ago

Originally Posted by DogScout

How are they alike?

Both over priced with DMCA spyware programs embedded in them!

What does DMAC mean?

George Wright
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- Hanz 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by George Wright
  
  What does DMAC mean?
  
  George Wright
  
  Digital Millennium Copyright Act
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  mrjasonser 14 years ago
  
  I was having a similar question regarding this 2 soft ware actually.
  Since all the expert are here, I would drop my question here also.
  
  I wanted to create a book in 2 version, 1 in Ebook version with a website , the other is hard copy paperback. which one would you advise I will use?
  
  I work in a company that design and manufacture consumer electronics for other brands. Our ID (Industrial Design) Team, the team that design the exterior housing of let's say for an example used Illustrator for their work. As for the Graphic Design Team, the team that design packaging and marketing material like brochures, posters....etc used photoshop most of the time.
  
  I recently wanted to learn from one of the graphic artist on how to use photoshop, but she advised me to learn illustrator instead, saying that it offer more flexibility and functions, which I can't seems to get use to.
  
  I kind of having a hard time to break through the learning curve, perhaps is because I am use to photoshop user interface already.
  
  Thanks
  
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zoobie

14 years ago

How about use an open source alternative called linkscape? I still don't understand why Adobe is charging so damn much on a piece of software...

Open source software isn't bad at all and openoffice is a great alternatives than MS office and you don't have to buy their stupid updates all the time and got dozen of security holes you heard in the software.

That's simply not justifying with their costs!

Thanks

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DogScout

14 years ago

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Adobe embeds a program that phones the adobe servers before allowing use of the program - supposedly to protect thier copyright. When Macramedia owned Dreamweaver and flash, they had a version of it, basically with their version, as many people could use the one key as possible, but only one was OKed to be used it at a time. So I had a partner and we bought one version for 2004 suite. as long as we coordinated use times, we could both use the same key and didn't have to purchase seperate keys. Adobe is way beyond that, and next to Disney has the best copyright lawyers in the contry. (I am not saying it is a good thing to crack programs, but having adobe know when ever I am using their program, and any other program that happens to be running on my computer while I am using it, is to me, invasive and as bad -if not worse- than sidewiki. Not to mention the spyware junks up my machine and slows it down.

That and the fact that there are programs that do the same thing at 1/7th the price (maybe only 95% as powerful) with learning curves you don't need a college degree to figure out (of course I figured it out without a college degree.)

How universities design whole courses around these programs (because of free copies and other 'perks') so design companies end up having to buy them at full price because they are what graduates know how to use is just Gates/IBM 'crap as close to legal blackmail' as you can get. (in my humble opinion.)

I'd never have PS after version 7 or Corels paintshop pro after version 9 on my computer. (I have too much respect for my computer than do that to it.)

There will come a time when all privacy will just be impossible to have. I suspect I'll be dead by then. BTW-with most monitors having a DPI of 72 to 96 at most, and plenty of prgrams capable of making 1200DPI images (printing) for far less cash and no evasiveness Ps is overkill anyway.

Personal rant.

Been in the graphics 'game' since '01 and watched it just deteriorate and become controlled by major corporations buying up all the little players that sold mostly to trailer park shut-ins that either did that, made bird houses or just died of boredom. Oh well
Mark

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mrjasonser

14 years ago

Hi DogScout,
This is rather a very "different perspective" altogether. What other free software would you suggest for now, then?

Cheers
Jason Ser

Originally Posted by DogScout

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Adobe embeds a program that phones the adobe servers before allowing use of the program - supposedly to protect thier copyright. When Macramedia owned Dreamweaver and flash, they had a version of it, basically with their version, as many people could use the one key as possible, but only one was OKed to be used it at a time. So I had a partner and we bought one version for 2004 suite. as long as we coordinated use times, we could both use the same key and didn't have to purchase seperate keys. Adobe is way beyond that, and next to Disney has the best copyright lawyers in the contry. (I am not saying it is a good thing to crack programs, but having adobe know when ever I am using their program, and any other program that happens to be running on my computer while I am using it, is to me, invasive and as bad -if not worse- than sidewiki. Not to mention the spyware junks up my machine and slows it down.

That and the fact that there are programs that do the same thing at 1/7th the price (maybe only 95% as powerful) with learning curves you don't need a college degree to figure out (of course I figured it out without a college degree.)

How universities design whole courses around these programs (because of free copies and other 'perks') so design companies end up having to buy them at full price because they are what graduates know how to use is just Gates/IBM 'crap as close to legal blackmail' as you can get. (in my humble opinion.)

I'd never have PS after version 7 or Corels paintshop pro after version 9 on my computer. (I have too much respect for my computer than do that to it.)

There will come a time when all privacy will just be impossible to have. I suspect I'll be dead by then. BTW-with most monitors having a DPI of 72 to 96 at most, and plenty of prgrams capable of making 1200DPI images (printing) for far less cash and no evasiveness Ps is overkill anyway.

Personal rant.

Been in the graphics 'game' since '01 and watched it just deteriorate and become controlled by major corporations buying up all the little players that sold mostly to trailer park shut-ins that either did that, made bird houses or just died of boredom. Oh well
Mark

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I Don't Speak The Queen's English, But I Say What I Mean and Mean What I Say.

Here is where I work now: www.LohasDigital.com

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PhotoShop and Illustrator. In simple terms, what's the difference?

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