Chapter TwoUsing the Drawing Tools

Before the introduction of Flash, most popular graphics programs were designed to create and edit bitmap graphics. A bitmap graphic (also known as a raster graphic or simply a bitmap) is made up of small squares called pixels.

Flash was one of the first popular programs to rely primarily on vector graphics instead of bitmaps. Vector graphics are essentially mathematical formulas that tell the computer what to draw. One of the innovations in Flash was a new set of tools that made creating vector graphics as simple and intuitive as creating bitmap graphics.

Since then, other programs such as Adobe Illustrator have further simplified the process of making vector graphics, but their tools often work ...

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