It’s been a while since the classic question and answer technique has been used in one of my blogs. So, I’m going to use it today as a replacement for a well thought out introduction. What is a raster image? 

Well, pictures are made of pixels, which is why when you zoom into a picture the quality drops tremendously and you’re left with multicolored squares. Raster images are the same, individually they’re just random dots of misplaced color but together they form a unique image. Raster images have pretty rich details and are usually used in printing and online graphics. 

I know it sounds great, but there is one problem with raster images, they can’t be scaled larger. If you try, the quality becomes low and all the pixels get blurry. But if your raster image was too big and you want it smaller, good news! They can be scaled down.

Vector Images

Onto vector images, these are made up of things called paths. If you’re familiar with the pen tool on photoshop, the curves you make are called a path and they can be followed with a stroke. Which will apply your brush along the guided line you created. Paths are interesting because no matter what situation, whether it be scaling up or down your image won’t lose its quality. Vector images are more simple compared to raster images. They look best when a solid color is used, while a raster can achieve color gradients and so forth. While this might be a bummer vectors are pretty great for logos and illustrations. You can then print them and make cool stickers or rasterize them and put them on the web.

Raster Images

Raster images allow life like color editing, lighting/shadows. Things that you couldn’t get in a vector image but rather a photographed photo. Vectors can be made as close to the image as possible but they will never have the life like color editing that rasterizing has. But that doesn’t mean you can’t combine the two, it’s just when you combine the two one is not truly one or the other but a new product. When you combine these two, the variables around them start to change as well. Things that were impossible with one are now possible with two.

Some file types for rasters are: pdf, png, gif, jpg etc. However vectors can also be made Into a pdf file.

All in all, raster’s are better for images and vectors are better for illustrations and logos. Any artwork—excluding digital drawing—that includes illustration of any kind. See you next time!