Welcome to this vector graphics tutorial! This tutorial is aimed at absolute beginners who are interested in getting started with vector graphics. One important point is that you can improve your SVG skills by testing and testing again : mastery comes with experience, experience comes with lots of practise.
So what are vector graphics? Well let's start by looking at the alternative to vector graphics, bitmap graphics. With bitmap graphics the image is divided up into a grid of pixels. The computer holds information about those pixels, such as their colour and where they are in the image and from this information the computer can "draw" the image. Note there is no obvious way of seeing what the image will be until it is drawn. Vector graphics work in a completely different way. They define the image mathematically. The files contain instructions that state "draw a circle" or "draw a curve". It is (at least for very simple cases) possible to read these instructions and imagine what the image should look like.
Because vector graphics work in this way, they are ideally suited to the kinds of drawings that require simple shapes that can be mathematically described. Diagrams, logos, clipart, house plans and maps are all suitable drawings. Photographs are not.
Here are some example vector images to show you the kind of image that can be drawn with a vector graphic program.
File Formats
Various file formats are used for vector graphics; the most common is Macromedia/Adobe Flash. However, Wikimedia prefers scalable vector graphics or SVG. SVG is an XML markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics. It is an open standard created by the World Wide Web Consortium. The editor we will be using in this tutorial is Inkscape.
Resource Link : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Vector_graphics_tutorial
