Are Web Graphics Square??
by admin on Nov.15, 2003, under Graphic Design, Web Design and Development
Web pages are almost always designed with Web graphics. But if you don’t understand some basic principles about Web graphics, you won’t be able to create great Web pages.
Web Graphics are Square
The first, and most basic principle to understand about Web graphics is that they are square, or rectangular.
The best way to see this is by looking at a Web graphic in a graphics software program. Pick a graphic that doesn’t look square, for example, the “Go” icon at the top of this page (next to the search box). It looks round, doesn’t it? But it’s not, it’s square. Try downloading it (right click, “Save Picture As…”) and opening it in Photoshop, Freehand, or Paint Shop Pro. The picture in the image is round(ish), but the actual image is square.
All Web graphics are square because of the nature of the Web. The Web is displayed on computers. Computers display pictures as millions of tiny dots. But even those dots are not round, they too are square.
Pixels in Web Graphics
As I mentioned above, all Web graphics are made up up millions of tiny dots, called pixels. Each pixel is a tiny tiny square that is colored to form the basis of the image. There is a similar technique in painting, called pointillism developed by Georges Seurat. The thing about computer pointillism is that pixels are square. This forces the shape of the final image to be square.
But if the basic unit of a Web graphic is square, then how are we able to create images that have round or curved elements, and appear to have round edges? This is accomplished with two techniques: anti-aliasing and transparency.
