Vector, Raster: A Quick Guide to Choosing the Right File Format for Your Screen-Printed Apparel

At Donsdatter Ink, we understand that your brand's image is everything. That's why we want to make sure your screen-printed items make the best impact possible. An important part of that is how your logo is represented on your printed apparel. When submitting your logo and other artwork for screen printing, it's important to provide a "vector" file of your image. Vector graphics (commonly found in file formats such as SVG, AI, and EPS) are best for more structured images, like line art graphics with flat, uniform colours.

On the other hand, raster graphics (file formats like PSD, JPEG, PNG, and TIFF) are based on a dot matrix structure, composed of a grid of tiny points of color called pixels. These images can be more detailed and stylized, but can be more difficult to print with certain processes, like spot color screen printing. You can identify a raster or bitmap image by looking at it very closely - if you zoom in enough, it becomes unrecognizable because raster graphics are a dot matrix data structure that generally represent a rectangular grid of pixels.Vector images, made of thin lines and curves created with mathematical formulas, can be scaled, colored, and resized repeatedly and infinitely without losing resolution or quality. However, because vectors are created from simple shapes, they cannot have certain special effects available with raster images. Most brands create their logos, illustrations, and technical drawings as vector images. For the majority of logo screen prints, vector images are optimal. Trust Donsdatter Ink to make your logo look its best.