What I’ve read online says that Vector art uses math to make the image scale better but isn’t ‘math’ used in Pixel art in, say, Photoshop as well? I’m having trouble wrapping my head around how the math might be different when creating a line in Photoshop vs Illustrator for example.
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Math is used when you create the image in both cases, but how the image is stored changes how that math applies.
Think of an image like a sheet of graph paper. You fill in each box on the grid to create an image. Up close it looks like a bunch of colored squares but if you get far enough away it looks like a picture.
When you use photoshop to draw a shape, say a line between two points the program asks “what color should I make this box” and fills it in based on the math for the line. But once the line is finished being drawn the program no longer remembers it’s a line. It stores the image purely as a set of colored boxes. That’s fine if the image never changes size but if you want to make the image bigger or smaller the computer no longer knows what shape you drew originally, it only knows the color of all your boxes. So if you resize such an image the computer has to use algorithms to guess how to fill in the boxes in the new bigger (or smaller) image.
A vector image on the other hand stores the information about what to draw as mathematical instructions. When you draw a line it doesn’t store the information as a grid of colored boxes. It stores it as a set of starting and ending coordinates and the thickness and color of your line. When you need to see the image, such as on your screen the computer will use those mathematical instructions to tell the screen what color to make the pixels (aka the boxes from our above example) but it doesn’t forget the original shape instructions. If you make the image bigger (or smaller) it can use the math to redraw the line so it looks more smooth.
There are advantages and disadvantages to using each kind of image. For photos and other similar images, pixel based works well because what we see isn’t in the real world a bunch of simple geometric shapes. But for things like logos or designs vector art works well because it’s based on lines and shapes.
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