Bitmap pictures (also called paint-type or raster images) are made from a series of small dots, much like a piece of graph paper with specific squares filled in to form an image. Bitmaps are created with and edited in paint programs, such as Microsoft Paint. All scanned graphics and photographs are bitmaps. When they are resized, they lose definition, and the individual dots that make up the picture become visible.

You can change the way colors look in a bitmap picture by adjusting the brightness and contrast, converting color to black and white or grayscale, or creating transparent areas. To change specific colors in a bitmap, you need to use a photo editing program.

Bitmap pictures are often saved with a .bmp, .png, .jpg, or .gif extension.

Drawn pictures (also called vector drawings) are created from lines, curves, rectangles, and other objects. The individual lines can be edited, moved, and rearranged. When a drawn picture is resized, the computer redraws the lines and shapes so that they retain their original definition and perspective. AutoShapes (AutoShapes: A group of ready-made shapes that includes basic shapes, such as rectangles and circles, plus a variety of lines and connectors, block arrows, flowchart symbols, stars and banners, and callouts.) are drawn pictures.

Because a drawn picture is made of lines and shapes, you can group and ungroup, reorder, and change the color of one or all parts of the picture.

Drawn pictures are saved in the format of the application that created them. For example, Microsoft Windows Metafiles (metafile: A vector-based graphic. Metafiles are represented as collections of lines rather than pixels, so you can manipulate them without the distortions common to bitmap (raster) graphics.) are saved with a .wmf extension.