Raster and Vector, When and Where

[Gavinr]

Hi peeps,

On first glance you might think of this as a bit of a trolling, or a comedy title which you could apply to a Cartoon Network character project, but in reality I'm really looking for genuine opinion, experience and insight from those of you who have worked in such a manner. Whilst I can appreciate the flexibility inherent to having raster graphics be available within a vector project, it seems also to contradict the basic principle of electing to use vector - that of infinite scalability, particularly given that you can apply filter effects to vector elements and achieve much of what you might want whilst not being incumbered by the limitations of pixels. How do you feel about the practical application of this aspect of Affinity Designer and how might you have applied or perceived it as a workflow?

[gdenby]

Taking a business position, if a client asks for a low quality photo to quickly be inserted into a nicely formed design, one must do what one can. Having the ability to paint out imperfections, do a bit of sharpening, etc is very desirable

 

From a purist point of view, all vector is most desirable. I've seen some work where people went to the effort to vectorize all the way down to pixel level, tho I can't quite see the value of that.

 

But looking at from the perspective of current in-put and out-put, it seems that raster images are often beyond the average human eyes range of sensitivity. For print output, there will most likely always be the problem of shifting into CMYK color space, but in terms of resolution, there are now displays which approach giclée printing. AD supports current Retina displays, not quite at the highest end, but still spatially fine enough that it is very hard for most people to discern pixelization. The old raster limitations that vector graphics were created to remedy are now much less of a problem. 

 

my $.02

[retrograde]

Hey @Gavinr I use a combination of both in my work. Mostly vector but more and more raster painting and effects. Effects like gaussian blur and inner shadow, a lot. I do some shading as painted pixel layers with the raster brushes when I either can't achieve the look I want using a vector approach or I'm looking for a specific texturing look that is better suited as a painted texture. Speaking of texture, placing hi-res raster textures work nicely in places as well. (Check out my 26 page tutorial in the Affinity Designer workbook for an in-depth step by step tutorial of the sort of things I'm talking about).

 

Generally, unless you're going to be showing or printing your work huge, most of the time a combination of both vector and raster is fine. In the old days it was kind of frowned upon, these days it's basically expected. I always work fairly big to begin with 16" x 20"-ish and send out my client work final images as exported tiffs or pngs at 300ppi. Unless you're doing outdoor or exhibit banners you should be okay. Always check with the printer or output place before starting if it's going to be for a client. :-)

 

What I like about Designer is the ease at which working in both vector and raster in the same file is almost seamless, compared to other apps out there. They've really made it easy.

 

Hope that helps.

[Alfred]

55 minutes ago, retrograde said:

I always work fairly big to begin with 16" x 20"-ish and send out my client work final images as exported tiffs or pngs at 300ppi. Unless you're doing outdoor or exhibit banners you should be okay.

 

And if you are doing outdoor or exhibit banners, the minimum viewing distance is likely to be big enough that you won’t need more than 150ppi (and often very much less).