Raster images and vector images are two types of graphics that make up almost all images found in the digital world. Raster images are the ones found most often. JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs are all types of raster images. They are made of rows and columns of colored squares or more commonly known as, pixels. On the other hand, vector images are made up of mathematical equations and points laid out on a coordinate grid.
Vector images have the benefit of being infinitely scalable without the loss of definition, while raster images become more pixelated or blurry as they are zoomed in. Since raster images are made of pixels, it is also very hard to convert a raster image into a vector one. That is because pixels have to be interpreted as lines, curves, and points. Up until recently, converting raster images was a manual task that took a lot of effort, now some programs using machine learning are starting to do it automatically.
