Images Made From Pixels vs. Vectors

A pixel is the tiniest particle (element) of a digital picture (any kind of digital image – photo, painting, illustration, etc.). The primary property of pixels is that a pixel is simply a square of a single solid color. Depth refers to the number of colors a pixel can display.

Images made from pixels differ radically from images made from vectors (paths). CorelDRAW images are made up of outlines (paths, vectors) that the computer processes and remembers as math formulas. Corel PHOTO-PAINT builds its images within a simple grid of squares similar to a sheet of graph paper.

File sizes of pixel-based pictures tend to be much larger than file sizes for vector images. For instance, a 5″ X 7″ color image suitable for good-quality printing would be over 12 MB in size. A similar-sized vector image could be under 1 MB in size.

Learn more about the environment of Corel PHOTO-PAINT.