Difference Between Illustrator and Photoshop

Adobe has been the leading software company when it comes to computer graphics editing. Their most prominent product in this field has been Photoshop. Photoshop is an imaging tool that is used to modify pictures in order to enhance or clean the picture. Another program is illustrator, which is used to create vector graphics. Vector graphics are not like real world pictures since every component in a vector graphic is made out of simple and complex shapes.

Photoshop has gained popularity due to its amazing power in enhancing pictures for magazines and websites. It has become very popular that the word photoshop has often been used as a verb in terms like ‘photoshoping a picture’. The capabilities of photoshop range from simple ones like changing the brightness and contrast to more complex functions like cloning, masking, and overlaying. A capable artist can use photoshop to erase unwanted elements in the photograph or add new elements and the resulting photo would seem like it was taken that way. Photoshop only deals with bitmap images which consist of pixels. Thousands or millions of pixels arranged in a grid make up a single photo. Photoshop modifies the coloration of these pixels in order to come up with the end result.

Adobe Illustrator is another tool in the adobe arsenal. But unlike photoshop, it is not meant to edit pictures that were taken with a camera. Illustrator creates vector graphics which can be based on actual photos but are not derived from it. Creating images with illustrator would usually end up as bitmap images just like what is being dealt with by photoshop, but they don’t start out that way. A vector image is made out of lines and curves that follow a certain mathematical equation. The colors do not correspond to a single pixel or anything like that. The advantage of vector images is that it looks just as good no matter how big you scale it, unlike bitmap images that shows individual pixels and starts getting blockier when you zoom in on it.

It is really quite easy to choose whether to use photoshop or illustrator with your imaging needs since each caters to a different criteria. If you want to enhance or edit your pictures so that they are more presentable, the choice would be photoshop. But if you want to create new graphics for your website or for printing, Adobe Illustrator could create these images from scratch depending on the skill level of your artist.

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