Raster and Vector Images

There different digital image formats on the computer with different sizes and different purposes.

There is the raster image which consists of BMP, GIF, JPEG and TIFF files and there is the vector image which also consists of PDF, FLA and AI files.

The difference between raster and vector is that raster images have pixels which can capture pictures with continuous variety of colour tones and can be edited in Photoshop. But if I were to enlarge a raster image too much, the image would lose its quality and become blurry and I would start see the pixels.

Vector images contain paths which are coloured lines, texts and shapes and are not contained in pixels so that the image can increased or reduced without losing quality. When I create a vector image on Adobe Illustrator it creates a mathematical path based on the command of the user also when I resize the vector image to big or small it would not lose its quality but the vector image can’t have great detail with multiple colours only one colour for each shape so it can’t be used for photo editing software.

For an example I copied this image from http://vector-conversions.com/images/raster_vs_vector.jpg to show the different of raster and vector. The versus image in the raster corner has been enlarged but it starts to loses the quality and starts to become blurry and you can see the pixels, while in the vector corner the versus image has been enlarged but it keeps the good quality of the image with no blurriness or any pixels showing.

So if I were to make a logo big or small I would use the vector images, but if I want to capture a digital image with great details in colours and can edit them on Photoshop then I would use raster images.