So you have a client (or you are the client) ordering a promotional item to hand out to their clients. Grrreat! They decide on their handout of choice and you say, “OK, I’m going to need your logo in a vector/eps format. Will you or your designer email it to me?”

Following that are any number of scenarios. Unless they’ve done this before, some painful teeth-pulling over the next few days, even weeks, usually ensues until you have the correct file to forward to your vendor, embroiderer, screen printer or ‘other-er’ who will make the final magic happen.

Here is a comparison of the differences between vector and raster images. (The next post will cover why this all matters – so stay tuned.)

VECTORS

• Formats are: EPS, SVG, AI, CDR, WMF & DRW
• Created in drawing/illustration programs (Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, etc.)
• Made up of points, lines and curves
• Scalable. They can be enlarged or reduced in size and won’t lose any details
• Easy to edit
• Typically much smaller files
• Color modes: CMYK/4 Color, Pantone/Spot, RGB
• Used for: logos, branding & marketing materials (letterhead, business cards, signage, etc.)
• Able to be saved or exported to raster/bitmap formats

RASTERS

• Formats are: BMP, JPG, TIF, GIF & PNG
• Created in photo editing programs (Adobe Photoshop, PaintShop, etc.)
• Made up of pixels, each one assigned to one color
• Only able to be reduced in size; cannot be enlarged without losing sharpness and image quality
• Difficult to edit
• Typically larger files, especially high resolution images
• Color modes: RGB, CMYK, WebHex
• Used for: photographs, web images
• Cannot be converted to a vector image without either manually redrawing or relying on specific software

That’s the quick and dirty comparison. Next post will discuss why this matters.

Photo credit: Paramount Pictures’ Airplane! movie screenshot