Image Fundamentals

Raster vs. Vector

All digital images fall into one of two main categories: raster or vector.

Raster (pixels)

Image

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is the most popular raster image editing application. Photos and paintings created in Photoshop are made up of pixels (short for picture element). A pixel is the smallest physical point in an image. Pixel-based images are called raster or bitmap. Raster images have a fixed resolution at which they look best. When scaled up, quality is lost and you may see pixels or jagged edges.

Raster or Bitmap

The image resolution is made up of pixels (measured in pixels per inch, ppi)

Images typically ...

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