A digital photo of an iris was "knocked-out" and edited in PhotoShop for a commercial site. The PhotoShop TIFF file was then opened in Macromedia Freehand and "vectorized" using the autotrace tool in Freehand. This converted a resolution-dependent bitmap file into a resolution -independent and vector file that can be highly enlarged without pixelating. Standard conversion to .jpg or .gif formats for Internet display would lose this scalability advantage of the vector file, and standard vector formats (like Illustrator or Freehand native file formats or .eps files) cannot be displayed on the Internet. But Adobe Acrobat™ PDF (Portable Document Format) files, which can be scaled, are able to be displayed on current Web browser, provided the Acrobat Reader plug-in is installed in your browser. A text link from the PDF version of the file will open the file in Acrobat over the Net and allow the image to be scaled-up with the magnification tool. Click the link below to open it in Acrobat Reader

Before you deal with the complex graphic above, here's (SpyEye logo ) an example of a quite small sample vector graphic logo originally created in Illustrator and saved in the Acrobat (.pdf) file format --- note that file size here remains very small, but the file is scalable (use the magnifying glass icon in the Acrobat toolbar). When you click the link, the file will open in Acrobat Reader. This file should download and open quickly in a special Acrobat window from the browser. If it doesn't, you'll experience the major drawback of the PDF format for the Internet ---- you don't have the required Acrobat PDF Reader internet plug-in installed in your browser or a browser version capable of working with the Acrobat format.

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Iris (PDF) for Acrobat {note: This demo file is really too big (>1Mb) for general Internet browsing downloading and is viewable only with the Acrobat browser plug-in. Download via low bandwith modems is not suggested -- this really is for T1 or ISDN lines}. It's a big file since vectorizing the whole flower in high detail with multiple colors required a very large number of complex vector paths. But a comparable bitmap file at 300 ppi resolution would be a much larger file and very hard to display over the Net .

compare the above .pdf file with the scale- and resolution-limited standard .jpg version of the iris below.

Iris (JPEG) bitmap file for standard Web browser view. [Although this file looks better in terms of image quality, it can't be blown-up on the Web, where the pdf can when viewed in the Acrobat browser].