3. Clipart vs photographs

When you are designing a poster, brochure or other publication that needs artwork, what factors might influence your decision to choose either a photograph or clipart?

 

Clipart Photographs
There are a limited amount of clipart images available and you may not be able to find something that is suitable. There are an unlimited amount of photographs, venues, scenery and backdrops which can be captured.
Although clipart can be ungrouped and some changes made to the colours, any graphical editing is limited. There are numerous graphical editing techniques which can be applied to photographs in order to achieve the look and feel required
Because clipart is generic, it may not be suitable for conveying a strong message about a topic. Sometimes a photograph is more effective in conveying a message or feeling. For instance, consider a poster for a stray-dog charity asking for donations, is it more effective to use a clipart dog image or a photograph of a real one?
Clipart images are not as detailed as photographs and often have a lot of white space. Thus printing costs might be cheaper. Printing costs are higher because there are many more subtle tones and colours
Because clipart is normally a vector image, file sizes are generally smaller than those containing photographs. File size - documents containing photographs will be larger in size than those with clipart images
Large amount of royalty free clipart is available Need to purchase stock photos with the right licence or pay for a photographer
Don't normally need any specialist graphics software to alter the colours in a clipart image May need specialist graphics editing software to alter the photograph such as re-sizing, adding contrast or adjusting colours
You may need to contact the licence holder of the clipart to obtain their permission to use the image. If the photograph includes people then you need their permission to use it, especially for commercial work

 

challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: Photo Editing