All you need to know about SVG files – What is an SVG file?

What is SVG? How are SVG files used? Here are things to know about SVG files.

Image. Designers understand, love and always want to use them. Formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF and many others are quite familiar to regular Internet users, so why is there another format needed? What is SVG and why should you care about it?

Images are very effective in conveying messages but have limitations when resizing. If you’ve ever tried adding images to your website, you probably know that enlarging an image often results in a blurry image. There’s no point putting a sharp photo on a website if the resulting display is poor quality and pixelated.

That’s why every website owner should know about SVG files. SVG allows you to display images on the web with light capacity, flexible resizing ability while still ensuring high aesthetics.

What is an SVG file?

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a web-friendly vector file format. In contrast to pixel-based raster files like JPEG, vector files store images through mathematical formulas based on points and lines on a grid. This means vector files like SVG can be resized significantly without losing quality, making them ideal for logos and complex online graphics.

It’s not just their resizability that makes SVGs extremely popular with web designers. SVGs are written in XML code, meaning they store any textual information as text and not as shapes. This allows search engines like Google to read SVG graphics to find their keywords, which can potentially help a website increase its search rankings.

Advantages of SVG files

SVG is made up of pixels, vector graphics should always maintain their resolution, no matter how big or small the size. Users don’t have to worry about SVG images losing quality in certain browsers or when resizing for display in different places.

Basic SVG files are typically smaller than raster images, built from many colored pixels instead of using a mathematical algorithm.

Because SVG files treat text as text (not as design), screen readers can scan any words contained in the SVG image. This is very useful for people who need help reading websites. Search engines can also read and index SVG image text.

How to open SVG files

From Chrome and Edge to Safari and Firefox, all major browsers now allow opening SVG files, whether you’re using a Mac or Windows. Just launch the browser and click File. Then, open to select the file you want to view and it will be displayed in the browser.

Opening SVG images with your computer’s built-in program is just as easy. Double-click a file name and you’ll get a list of programs that can open that file, or the file will automatically open in a compatible program.

How to create and edit SVG files

Follow these steps when using Adobe Photoshop:

• Once you’ve stitched an image in Photoshop, click File > Export > Export As.
• Click the drop-down menu Format then select SVG.
• Select Export All and save the file.

Another useful note, Photoshop is a raster graphics editor so users can create and edit SVG files in Adobe Illustrator, a vector graphics editor.