Vector vs. Raster Art – What You Need To Know & Why

If you’re aspiring to learn more about design, just beginning to dabble your toes in design, or you heard the terms “vector” and “raster” and don’t really know what they mean, then this is the place to be to know and understand the difference between vector and raster art. You can design with either, but one is king in the design world. Let’s dig right in and by the end of this post, you’ll know how to spot their differences, and which to design in for your future projects.

Raster

Let’s start with raster art. The photo that you just took on your smartphone is an image file, made up of millions of pixels in a bitmap format. That photo is raster art. Raster art is more commonly photographs, or photo-realism images. Below are some key points to know and understand about raster files:

• Cannot be scaled without losing quality
• Resolution dependent
• Photographs
• Made of bitmaps/millions of pixels
• Saved as image files (.psd, .jpg, .png, .tiff)
• Large file sizes
• Identified by pixelated and blocky edges

Raster images, when scaled, loses quality. It is generally a large file size, which presents issues with storage and file sharing. The edge of the image is not smooth and is pixelated. Raster design projects are created in a photo editing software, like Adobe Photoshop. While we all love our photos, this is not an ideal place to design projects because of it’s restraints.

Vector

Vector art is the king of the design world. The logos you see virtually everywhere around you are vector creations. Vector art is created by a computer software program, like Adobe Illustrator. Vector art is commonly logos, illustrations, icons, charts, and more. Here are some vector characteristics:

• Scalable, without losing quality
• Always high quality, high resolution
• Made of points, lines, curves, and shapes
• Type, fonts, and graphic design are vector art
• File types: .ai, .svg, .eps, .pdf, .cdr
• Smaller file sizes
• Identified by clean, crisp, sharp edges

Vector art is extremely versatile and flexible. It is easily identified by smooth, clean edges that can be scaled and never lose quality. Vector files are made of points, lines, and shapes in a mathematical environment that is editable in a software program, like our favorite: Adobe Illustrator. Vector files are always high quality, the file sizes are smaller, and is your go-to when creating any design piece.

When I was first dabbling in graphic design, I was a professional photographer. Whenever I wanted to create a graphic design project, I used Photoshop – because that’s what I knew! My brother had learned how to use Illustrator and was creating some really neat projects, and I was totally jealous. Not long after, I downloaded Illustrator, but my excitement was short lived – I just could not understand how to use it. It was very frustrating and I totally hated it. It wasn’t until a few months later when I took a college course JUST on Illustrator, that my mind totally expanded to the incredible capabilities of vector art within Illustrator. Today, I use Illustrator 99% of the time, because now, most of my projects are best suited for Illustrator.

Now you know the basics between vector and raster art. Learn from my rookie mistakes, and start your design projects in the right format from the beginning. I promise this will save you the pain of fixing or re-doing it later on. Projects best for designing in vector format include: logos, illustrations, vinyl cutting files, icons, any project involving lots of type, birthday cards, wedding invitations, mothers and fathers day cards, brochures, charts, etc. Projects best for designing in a raster format include: photos, and image manipulation and editing projects. As you’ve hopefully concluded, vector art is king in the design world, and your go-to format for creating your graphic design projects.