The Software Fundamentals of Fashion Design

As both an educator and industry professional, I cannot tell you how many times I have observed designers starting out in either graphic or fashion design who fail to lay a proper foundation. This foundation requires a solid understanding of the basic software programs used by the industry. The key to successful results lies in differentiating between vector and raster based software- two unique software formats each of which provides for unique advantages and disadvantages.

When it comes to software for the fashion industry there are several choices in off-the-shelf software, or software that is readily available to anyone, such as Adobe PhotoShop®, Adobe Illustrator® or CorelDraw®. Proprietary software, software that is specifically designed for use within a given industry, is often a hybrid which allows the user to use a traditional off-the shelf software in conjunction with an industry software frequently sold as a plug-in. This kind of software has been adapted to work with the off-the-shelf software and includes features useful to the industry.

Regardless of which software application is used to develop apparel and textile designs, there still remains the most fundamental choice of will you be using a vector-based program or a raster-based program to accomplish the task? These two types of drawing formats are the crux of most design operations and are the foundations I was referring to earlier.

Vector-Based Programs

Features of Vector-based software applications

What is a vector-drawing program? Drawing or Illustration Programs

What does a vector-drawing program do? Creates vector images based on mathematically defined curves lines.

Disadvantages? Not well suited for editing or creating realistic images.

Advantages? No Jaggies or stair-step appearance, just smooth looking graphics
Fonts are better recognized
Can be saved as a bitmap file format
Higher quality output
Can manipulate objects freely and still access them individually.

Usage parameters Flat renderings of garments, some motifs or logos

Vendors Corel Corp (CorelDraw), Adobe Corp. (Illustrator), and Macromedia (Freehand) Micrographix (Designer)

How to save a vector files Native Formats such as .ai for Adobe Illustrator or .cdr in CorelDRAW, or universal file formats such as EPS, PICT, and WMF

Vector drawings, also known as object-oriented drawings, are images defined by curves and lines or mathematical formulas. Basically, this means is a vector program stores each image as a series of instructions on just how to draw the image. These graphical representation of objects usually consist of line drawings or other primitives such as lines, rectangles, ellipses, arc, spline and curves. In many cases type set are generally simpler and can be highly compressed (made smaller).

The most important feature of vector-based images is the resolution or clarity of the drawing. Vector images are resolution independent and always render at the highest resolution an output devise can produce. That means the higher the resolution of the monitor or printer the sharper the object-oriented image will appear.

What this means to the fashion designer is that these drawings are easy to select, color, move, re-size (without degradation of image), re-

Vector Illustrations - Notice the image can sized up or down without losing quality.

order, over-lap with other images, access individual objects, and re-format (i.e. change color or fill).

Vector graphics are also much smaller files than a raster/bitmap files. Vector files can be re-sized without degrading the file in anyway. This is not true of raster images.

Vector images are best used when working with small type and bold smooth crisp graphics requiring curves and lines. They are considered the most flexible and use relatively little memory for storage. The downside is that vector based images are not as realistic as raster-based images which can hold a lot more data . Furthermore, they are known for having a flat versus dimensional appearance when compared to a raster-based image.

Raster-Based Programs
Raster images create realistic or real world images. These types of drawing programs allow the designer to refine details, make dramatic changes with special effects options, and are noted for providing a greater degree of subtly than vector based graphics.

Features of Raster-based software applications

What is a raster-based program? Image Editing Program (Also known as paint programs)

What does a raster-based program do? Raster or Bit Map or REALISTIC Images based on pixels.

Disadvantages Cant create crisp, bold, smooth graphics

Usage parameters Primarily used working with photographs and other realistic image, i.e.: clip art.

Vendors EX: Corel Corp (CorelPHOTO PAINT and Painter), Adobe Corp. (PhotoShop)
How to save a raster-based program: Native Formats such as .psd for Adobe PhotoShop, or universal formats such as TIFF, BMP, PCX, BMP, JPEG and GIF

How to save raster files Native Formats such as .psd for Adobe PhotoShop, or universal formats such as TIFF, BMP, PCX, BMP, JPEG and GIF

Raster/bitmap: = best for realistic images such as photographs. These images can be transformed by using image editing filters to create a wide range of special effects and natural looks. These programs work with pixels or bitmapped images that can be enhanced with vector style painting options.

Lets take a moment and give you an overview of what a bitmap is and what it does. Bitmap is a collection of picture elements or dots, also known as pixels. Bitmapped images are resolution-dependent. Basically this means you must specify a resolution. If you create the image and then change the resolution youde-grade the image. Scaling up can be a real disaster, scaling the image smaller sometimes yields better results. In fact the raster image is a referred to as a Bitmap image because it contains information that is directly mapped to the display grid of x (horizontal) and y (vertical) coordinates.

Raster Illustrations - notice the degredation in quality as the image is increased in size.

Bitmapped images are resolution dependent, best used with continuous tone images like photographs and can be modified with great detail because you can manipulate each pixel. If you are scanning a hand drawn image that you plan to modify, you will want to save it as a raster image. Bitmapped images are difficult to modify and to re-size as well as difficult to freely access objects individually.

Advantages and disadvantages of raster images include:

Enlarging - Suffers from alialising or blurred appearance when enlarged
Pixels or squares make ajaggie stair-step appearance.
Reduction of image can result in interpolation or indiscriminate discarding of pixels.
Can modify individual pixels or large groups of pixels.
Require huge amounts of memory. Usually larger than a vector file, this means they should be compressed to store.
Data compression can shrink the size of the pixel data.
Slows down the reading, rendering and printing

Adobe PhotoShop® is one of the most widely used image editing programs. Another leading painting program you can use to edit and enhance photos is Corel Painter. Fashion Designers love Painter because it simulates natural mediums such as charcoals, chalks oils and acrylics to enhance their photographic images.

Now that you have a better understanding of what each of these programs are and what they do, the next step is have a better understanding of how you should share and save your files.

Common File Formats

Each image created will need to be saved in a specific file format that is native to the application. Naming and saving in image along with the file format extension will make it easy for other users of the images to identify the type of drawing it is and what applications may be used to open it. Typically this extension is added to a file automatically in it’s own default known as a native format. As in the case of using Adobe Illustrator, the file will be saved automatically with an “.ai” extension unless you assign the file another extension.

The challenge arises when the native file is not always readable in another application. This means after you name a file, you have to give the file a special identifying code after its name that will enable you to open the file, no matter what program or platform you use.

Below is a list of common universal file formats used in saving vector and raster-based images, most of which are inter-application and cross-platform compatible. This is by no means an inclusive list, but merely a description of some of the most common used by most fashion designers.