The mathematical formulas of vector images allow them to be easily scaled up or down to the desired dimensions while maintaining clean, crisp quality in physical production–from business card to billboard. This is why it is the preferred file type to send to your screen printing shop. The quality is guaranteed no matter the size of the print. 

Raster images, on the other hand, are great for detailed digital photographs, paintings, or images with complex color blending and gradients. These images are made up of thousands of tiny individual squares called pixels that form a complete picture. However, since they have a fixed number of pixels, scaling or stretching a raster image that doesn’t have high enough resolution forces your editing system to guess how to fill the gaps, leading to blurriness or pixelation.

Learn more about how to prepare your artwork for screen printing >