gift mugs make great coffee mug gifts

Custom Decorated Ceramic Coffee Gift Mugs

Many customers ask us what the difference is between: "Spot" colors and "Process" colors; and between: "Vector" and "Bitmap or Raster" formats. 
The easiest way to explain this is to "see" the difference. 
Here is our attempt to show you and explain the differences.

Vector Drawing Bitmap Image
Spot Color Example Process Color Example
Many customers ask us what the difference is between: spot colors and process colors; and between: vector and bitmap formats Many customers ask us what the difference is between: spot colors and process colors; and between: vector and bitmap formats
Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator Photo Shop and Photo Paint
formats: .cdr and .ai formats: .psd and .cpt or .tif

Vector drawings are created with mathematical formulas and hence can be enlarged or reduced in size without any loss of quality and definition. Vector art normally is also smaller in size as it's not resolution dependent.

Raster or Bitmap art is composed of individual pixels similar to a real photo. It can be generated by an artist with a paint program or scanned-in from a printed original. Raster art is resolution dependent. The resolution of the art determines the size of the file and the "sharpness" of the reproduction. This type of digital art cannot be enlarged or reduced at will without some deterioration of its quality. We recommend a resolution of 300 dpi's for mug decorations. Raster/bitmap art should always be send to us in its final physical dimensions.
For details on bitmap formats to avoid for images to be used for printing, consult here.
The difference between vector and bitmap or raster formats can also be explained as follows:
With a bitmap or raster, the image is broken up into a series of pixels (picture elements). So for a digital graphics that is 150 pixels wide and 150 pixels high, you have a total of 22,500 individual pixels. Each of those pixels can hold any of 16.7 million colors for JPEG files and any of 256 colors for GIF files. So even for a small file, there is a lot of data to be stored. Each of those formats contains a compression routine that makes saving the data much smaller than if it were stored uncompressed. Another limitation is that resizing the file may give undesirable results. If you enlarge the file, it becomes pixelated or stair stepped. Making the image smaller will throw out detail. But for many things on the web, bitmaps work great. A web artist can tweak the images to make the files small while still getting great results. And best of all, the browsers support both formats. 

Then there are vectors. If you want to create a shape in vector format, you only have to describe a few data points along a path. Then you can fill the path with any color. So for simple shapes, vector files can be much smaller in size. And they can be scaled to any size you want without any loss of quality. 
- Programs like: Adobe Photoshop, Corel PHOTO-PAINT, Metacreations Painter and JASC Paint Shop Pro are all dedicated to working with bitmaps and continuous-tone images. 
- Software dedicated to vectors include: Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Macromedia's Freehand.

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