MX-PEX1 (serv.man12). Fiery PEX1 Colour Reference Guide - Sharp Copying Equipment User Guide / Operation Manual. Page 86

Two broad categories of artwork can be printed from a personal computer to a color printer:

 and 

.

A raster image, also referred to as a bitmap, is composed of a grid of 

, each assigned a 

particular color value (as illustrated in example a in the following figure). The grid, when 
sufficiently enlarged, resembles a mosaic made from square tiles. Examples of raster images 
include scans and images created in painting or pixel-editing applications, such as Photoshop 
and Corel Painter.

. The 

resolution of a raster describes the compactness of the pixels and is specified in pixels per inch 
(ppi). The bit depth is the number of bits of information assigned to each pixel. Black and 
white raster images require only one bit of information per pixel. Grayscale images require 8 
bits per pixel. For photographic quality color, 24 bits of RGB color information are required 
per pixel, yielding 256 levels of red, green, and blue. For CMYK images, 32 bits per pixel are 
required.

When printing raster artwork, the quality of the output depends on the resolution of the 
source raster. If the raster resolution is too low, individual pixels become visible in the printed 
output as small squares. This effect is sometimes called “pixelation.”

In 

, picture objects are defined mathematically as lines or curves between 

points—hence the term “vector” (see example b). Picture elements can have solid, 

or patterned color fills. Vector artwork is created in illustration and drawing applications, such 
as Illustrator and CorelDRAW. Page layout applications, such as QuarkXPress, also allow you 
to create simple vector artwork with their drawing tools. PostScript fonts are vector-based, 
as well.

Vector artwork is resolution-independent. You can scale it to any size and resolution without 
danger of pixels becoming visible in printed output.