Raster graphics are comprised of entirely of coloured/shaded pixels, and as a result lose quality when you zoom in. There are essentially two types of digital graphics: 'raster' graphics (also known as 'bitmap') and 'vector' graphics. The really basic stuff is probably worth repeating. What I will talk about, however, is how you actually put your figures together-what tools/processes are used, and how to be organised. See, for example, the paper ' A brief guide to designing effective figures for the scientific paper' this article runs through dos and don'ts of making a figure to express your results clearly and effectively.

There's enough information on that out there already. What I won't be covering today though, is how to design good figures in the first place. Considering that these kind of activities are a central part of our research time, however, a little advice at the early stages can save a lot of effort. Very few students get taught how to do these things, so we just muddle our way through and learn along the way. The next few blog posts (when I get round to doing them) are going to be a series of tutorials into common but neglected aspects of the academic process, such as how to make figures (this post), and how to submit/prepare data for GenBank (coming later).

Inkscape vs gimp scientific journals