When used together, these two image types can give designers, marketers, and developers a powerful set of options. This means less flexibility in scaling the image on a page but decreases the load time of your webpages significantly. png, are also smaller files, since they store much less data than a vector image. Raster images are the most common image file type on the web, and enjoy wide support across browsers. Where vector images are highly scalable, the image quality of a raster image degrades when it’s enlarged, stretched, or shrunk. Raster images are ideal for realistic images, like photographs, but have some distinct disadvantages. Raster images, as mentioned above, are images that are created by assembling colored blocks – known as pixels – to create the graphic. This is an example of enlarging a vector and a raster proportionality. Converting from raster to vector can be done, but presents much greater challenges. The good news, however, is that you can export a vector graphic to a raster format. Unlike raster formats, support for vectors in web browsers is minimal. Unfortunately, this means that vector graphics are poor at creating realistic images.īecause vector graphics scale so well, they are ideal for things like logos, company branding, and anything that will be printed, from business cards and brochures to event booth backdrops. This means that the paths and objects that make up a vector image are individually scalable, preserving the quality of the image when scaling it up or down. They use mathematical formulas to construct the image, as opposed to raster images, which are created with individual, colored squares. Vector graphics are known as the image type that allows for the most flexibility. There are alternatives to these two applications, but industry experts largely turn to these Adobe products when creating vector and raster images. The industry-standard tool for vector graphics is Adobe Illustrator. The industry-standard tool for raster graphics is Adobe Photoshop. It’s important to understand the difference so that you can choose the type that best aligns with your needs. At the same time, the limitations of each of these image types make each of them a poor choice for other uses. But all of those formats fall into two general types of image files – Vector graphics and Raster images.Įach type has specific characteristics that make it ideal for certain uses. When it comes to 2D graphics, there are many different formats.

Vector and raster files are