What is the difference between raster and vector artwork?

How a graphic is built changes how it behaves — and whether it'll work on a drumhead.

Raster graphics (also called bitmaps) are grids of individual pixels. TIFF, GIF, JPEG and PNG are all raster formats. Raster is the right choice for photographs and anything with complex, subtle shading — and it's the only kind of artwork the HeadBuilder accepts.

The catch is size. Because a raster image is a fixed grid of pixels, enlarging it forces the computer to guess at the pixels in between. That guessing produces softness and distortion, and it gets worse fast as the size goes up.

If you're using a raster image, build it at full resolution at full size, or double resolution at half size. For a 22″ head that's 300 dpi at 22″ — 6600 × 6600 pixels — or 600 dpi at 11″, which is the same 6600 × 6600.

We generally don't recommend enlarging images yourself. We have tools and experience that do a genuinely remarkable job on files much smaller than you'd think possible. But the best result always comes from a full-size original.

Vector graphics are built from mathematical points, lines and curves rather than pixels, which means they scale infinitely with no loss at all. Clean lines and smooth curves make them the obvious choice for logos and illustrations headed for print. Where you have vector artwork, it's what we'd rather work with.

Vector files can't be used in the HeadBuilder — so if your artwork is an Illustrator, EPS, or vector PDF file, Leave It To Us and we'll handle it.