Vector Art Question

So I did a search, and looked through a few posts, and to be honest I'm still a little confused. I think I understand the difference between vector art and non vector art. But in terms of creating it, does it mean that in creating vector art, you're just using a program such as Illustrator instead of Photoshop?

I created a few images using adobe illustrator. So do they constitute vector art? Or is there something I'm still not understanding?

The images are here:
http://www.mcpstudio.com/vector/Distance1.jpg
http://www.mcpstudio.com/vector/LostinTime.jpg

Looks very nice, and the quality is high too!

Well thank you templastorm. But my question still stands. If you just create an image in Adobe Illustrator, does that make it vector art? Or is there something else that I'm still not understanding?

First off, nice work. Ok, to answere your question, yes. As long as you create your work in a vector prog. Your design is vector. However, once you save or export your design in any other format like, jpg, gif, png, etc. It ceases to be a vector image. In your case you would have to save your work in .ai format to retain it's vectorness (lol, I know vectorness is not a real term but the correct word escapes at the moment.)

The newer versions of PS do allow you to create vector designs but it's limited to shapes and text and you can't save it in vector format.

Thank you very much. That explains a lot.

The big difference between vector and raster is that vectors are caclulations that the program figures out and displays. So when you zoom in 1000x the lines are still smooth and there are no "jaggies." But with raster programs (like photoshop) the pixels are just put on the canvas, and when you scroll in a lot the lines get "jaggy."

When making logos and stuff, it's better to do in a vector program, since you can scale it to as big or as small as you want, and it will still look the same.

still, zooming in 1000x on a vector can give bad edges or intersections sometimes, I've seen this alot in flash but don't know how it is in illustrator since I havn't started to use it yet since I find flash so easy ^_^

If the vector is created accurately it won't. Flash tends to create 'messy' vectors when using brush tools etc.

Merlyn, bear in mind that just creating something in Illustrator doesn't always mean it's vector. For instance, if you imported a photograph (a bitmap) or two and simply saved the document in AI format, there wouldn't be any advantage. As Tom the Great has said, vectors are shapes/lines described by coordinates where as bitmaps are images described as grids of pixels.

Not so true anymore. The new versions of Illustrator (and I think Freehand) allow you to break down bitmaps and photos into vector images.

Obviously, tracing results in vectors, but this doesn't happen automatically and the point I was making stands.

Thank you all for helping to clarify this for me.