Shop Page Photoshoot

After a year's work the line is done. Here is a picture from the photoshoot of the tees on their own. Next up is the collection shoot with models...

Vector Art vs. Raster Art

                For the most part, my artwork is done in either of two ways. One, I will draw something by hand and then scan it into a computer to create a finished work. Or two, I will work from existing images such as photographs and art and add and alter them using Photoshop to achieve my vision. When discussing this process with a friend of mine who is a designer, he kept stressing to me the importance of using a vector program like Corel Draw or Illustrator. At the time I was so familiar with working in Photoshop that it was hard for me to even consider transitioning away from it. To save any aspiring artists or screen printers some time. Create your artwork in a vector program! Here’s why:

                 A Raster image (or bitmap image) is based on pixels, lots of small squares put together to form an image. For any classic gaming fans, think NES Mario. 

The problem with raster art is that you cannot accurately re-size your work. Raster programs will simply create more pixels thereby degrading the original quality of you artwork. Think about a small picture that has been blown up that looks blurry and grainy. When re-sized, the quality of the picture has been lost. This is where we get the term pixilation. Vector art, on other hand, does not have this problem. Vector art uses precise lines and endpoints. When you re-size with vector programs your lines and points are sized according to a formula keeping everything proportional. The additional advantage of vector is that your artwork will look much cleaner and precise. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/VectorBitmapExample.svg

                When it comes to screen printing, vector vs. raster can have an enormous impact on your work. Imagine you want to print giant letters (in this example I’ve used Tahoma font 250 size). When you zoom in, you can see the graininess of the font, if you have a good exposure unit this pixilation is going to come out in your prints.

Here’s the same look in illustrator:

In the immortal words of Top Gun, “Ice cold, no mistakes.”

Now before you go running out and thinking vector art is the end all be all, think again. For things such as text and fine lines, www.risewest.com/stickthislogic illustrator is definitely the way to go. However, sometimes you can use a bitmap image and it will make very little difference. Consider this image 

There is so much going on in this image that you don’t really notice it is raster. Even when you zoom in it is hard to notice.

If you look very carefully at some parts of the stem you can see the bitmap, but you are still going to get a nice looking print regardless, www.risewest.com/tree

                The important thing to note here is that you can create powerful artwork in both vector and raster programs. Choosing between the two will often depend on what you want to achieve. Personally, the more I learn about design and printing, the more I tend to gravitate toward illustrator.

                Now, as I said originally, my artwork is created in either of two ways, hand drawn or from existing images. Both methods are very simple to import into Photoshop and work with. Illustrator is another story. Everything that you import into the program must become vector. Consider this, when you scan an image (given you’re using an everyday scanner) you’re creating a raster image. Any photograph you have will also be raster. The majority of what you pull from the web, any jpeg, tiff, jiff, are all raster. This means, unless you are starting from scratch, you will have to learn how to trace with the pen tool. This is a skill that will take countless hours to master but will be worth it once you do.