TABLE OF CONTENTS The ubiquitous format for still picture interchange and storage is the JPEG. But around a hundred others exist, but many are proprietary to specific products. An enterprisewide asset management system will have the need to store many different file formats. In the interests of simplicity and efficiency, it will pay dividends to restrict the system to a handful of formats. Any other formats can be converted at the ingest point. A few formats have become the most popular: JPEG, TIFF, EPS, and GIF. Restricting the asset repository to just these few formats is not going to place great limitations on the later distribution or re-use of the content. Image files can be classified into two main groups: bitmap or vector.
Image assets are created either as a bitmap or in vector format. Each has its advantages; it depends on the type of image to be created. Bitmaps, also called raster graphics, represent an image as a regular grid of pixels. Each pixel is given a colour value. Bitmaps are used for continuous-tone images like photographs. A bitmap has a fixed number of pixels, so a fixed resolution. If the image is rescaled, the value of each pixel has to be recalculated. If a bitmapped image is scaled up in size, the image quality will degrade.
Vector graphics use mathematical equations to describe an image as lines and curves. A compact way of representing a curve is to use a cubic equation. In 1962, Paul B zier...
