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Why not draw everything in Quartz 2D or import only PNGs? In what situation would someone use both Quartz 2D and PNGs in an application?

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closed as off topic by Philip Regan Apr 15 '11 at 20:29

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You are very confused about what these two things are. It is not a situation of choosing one or the other. Your question is not unlike saying "should you use pens or ink to write with?"

Quartz 2D is the Mac framework for displaying 2D graphics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_2D

PNG is a raster file format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics

The key terms to look for in those description are "raster" and "bitmap." Note that Quartz is used to display bitmap images on Macs, and PNG is a kind of bitmap image.

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Well then I've come to the right place to sort things out eh? But one can draw lines and images with Quartz 2D correct? So for graphic images in iOS is the workflow to normally create a PNG in Inkscape or Illustrator and the manipulate such images with Quartz 2D? – user1083 Apr 15 '11 at 16:34
You are probably misunderstanding what "draw" and "manipulate" means in this context. Quartz does not have any vector drawing functionality (eg. lines); it "draws" in the sense of causing the right pixels on your screen to light up when you tell it what image to display. Or rather it tells OpenGL which pixels to light up; this is pretty complex stuff, it's probably best to just sum it up with "visual designers don't need to think about Quartz." – jhocking Apr 15 '11 at 18:48
Ok here's an example of what I was looking at: techotopia.com/index.php/… So yes it is not a vector path – user1083 Apr 15 '11 at 22:27