Vector vs. Raster, judged by the Norse gods

This was a project for FertileGoddess.com, one of several designs slated to adorn a new and improved line of yoga apparel. I drew the top half of Friia by hand and scanned her into Photoshop.

Freehand or Illustrator are better programs for this sort of work, being vector-based and lending themselves to clean lines. But scanners are raster-based to begin with and I'm lazy, so rather than scan it, redraw it, tweak it, I just put it into Photoshop at a high resolution and stay there. Do what I say, not as I do.

Vector Images are generated in illustration programs such as Illustrator or Freehand and are composed of geometry—lines, objects and fills. Because vector elements are mathematically defined, scaling to a larger or smaller size simply requires modification of their parameters. (Something computers love to do--math!) However, vector programs do not adapt well to photographic imagery at all.

Raster Images are broken down into a grid of digital picture elements, called pixels. Scanners, digital cameras, Painter and Photoshop are raster-based. While conversion from vector to raster is easily accomplished, raster to vector is much more hit and miss. (The way it's easy to draw a clean line and smudge it, but harder to un-smudge a once clean line.) Rasterized objects also don't take well to scaling, as the computer is much less adept at assuming and inventing arbitrary color.

SO! I sorta squiggled the dress and belt with the pen tool (using a mouse--I don't have a Wacom tablet either.) Then I printed her out again and traced some more stuff by hand, then scanned that...

THEN I went crazy on it in Photoshop, made some design decisions, thickened the lines and called it good. I sent it to my client, who loves everything I do. I am spoiled.

The End.