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There are two types of computer graphics -
vector and
raster. Vector images define curves and lines by mathematical formulas, enabling you to scale the image larger or smaller without taking a hit on image quality. Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand are two appplications that enable you create vector images. Vector-based images are best when working with small type and bold graphics (requiring crisp curves or lines), no matter what size they're scaled to.
Raster images are made up entirely of pixels (or small squares). It's not quite as easy to scale the images, but with some care, you can obtain excellent results. Adobe Photoshop is probably the best example of an application for editing raster images. Raster-based images are best when working with continous tone images, like photographs. No matter what type of application you initially created your image in, you can convert it to a raster format (the type of images used on the WWW) with an application like Adobe Photoshop or a utility such as DeBabelizer. Both GIF and JPEG are raster (or bit-map) image formats.
     
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