SVG
- Pronounced
- ess-vee-gee
SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. It is a markup language rather like HTML, but for pictures. Files written in it carry the .svg extension and can be placed straight into a web page. Their virtues: they weigh very little, and they can be enlarged or reduced without losing any quality.
There are two widely used and fundamentally different kinds of computer graphics: raster (.jpg, .png, .gif, .psd) and vector (.svg, .ai, .eps). A raster image is always a rectangle filled with pixels — small squares of individual colour. A vector image is a drawing built out of formulas.
The limit on a raster image is its resolution: how many pixels it contains, and no more. The limit on a vector image is detail. Raster handles photographs well; vector handles drawn things — logos, plans, diagrams, schematics.
The advantages of vector graphics, SVG included, are that the image can be scaled up or down without any loss of quality — no visible pixels, no blur — and that the file is usually far smaller than the raster equivalent would be.