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Clip art refers to electronic images used for various purposes such as advertising, publishing, and scrapbooking. They can be downloaded for free or purchased on CD/DVD. Clip art comes in two forms: bitmap and vector, with vector producing higher quality graphics. Animated clip art is also available.
The term clip art as used today refers to an electronic image or graphic. Clipart images and illustrations have a wide variety of uses, including flyers, advertising, scrapbooking, desktop publishing, and printed publications. Computer graphics come in an almost unlimited number of categories and types. Cartoons, borders, backgrounds, sketches, and photo clips are all generally referred to as clip art and are available from a number of sources. Electronic images can be bundled with software, are available for both free and paid download from the Internet, or can be purchased on CD or DVD.
Historically, clip art illustrations were physically cut out of printed books. As computers became more common and convenient, manual methods of printing and publishing evolved into an electronic process. It was no longer necessary to hand crop images and use them to layout materials for reproduction or publication. The name clip art stuck, and continues to be used, even as the old cropped images have been replaced by computer graphics.
An individual who needs to use electronic images can find them available in numerous places. Small illustrations are often bundled with software used for drawing, word processing, scrapbooking, and other writing, design, or publishing related tasks. They can also be downloaded from a huge variety of websites on the internet. Many images are available for free, while others are paid. A person looking to purchase a collection of computer graphics can also find them on CD or DVD.
Clipart comes in two different forms: bitmap and vector. Bitmap images (BMP) are widely used and include common file formats such as Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG). They are rectangle-shaped images at a fixed resolution. Bitmaps are made up of black-and-white or colored pixels and can become grainy or blurry when enlarged.
The second type of clip art file is known as a vector. Vector files use a mathematical formula to display the shapes, colors and lines of an image without the use of pixels. They can be scaled to any size without becoming distorted or grainy, and generally produce higher quality graphics than bitmap file formats. The only drawback is that a person needs professional-grade image editing or publishing software to use vector clip art files.
Electronic images can also be designed to move, flash, glow, and perform a number of other similar functions. Animated clip art is a novelty often found on web pages and emails. Like regular still computer graphics, animated images are available for download and can be offered for free or for a purchase price.
