What is vector art?
One of the first steps in our process is submitting designs for printing. Often times, our customers are confused regarding exactly what type of file we need to receive for our process. In order to have clean and appealing screen printing, we require vector artwork. Hopefully, the information below will give some insight into what vector artwork is and how we might be able to help in creating an amazing product with you.
WHAT THE HECK IS VECTOR ART?
Unlike JPEGs, GIFs, and BMP images, vector graphics are not made up of a grid of pixels. Instead, vector graphics are comprised of paths (points, lines, shapes) to create art that is clean, editable, and can be scaled to any size without losing image quality. The ability to edit and scale are important factors for printers because it allows us to manipulate the size of the image in the printing process.
Check out the image below. You will see how the vector art stays crisp as it is enlarged, as the raster image becomes distorted. The raster image also has tons of different colors and shades in it, and the vector file only has 3 solid colors. This all has a huge impact on the screen printing process which is why we need to have a vector file to achieve a high-quality print.
DO I HAVE VECTOR ART?
Most vector art is created in Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw, and the files typically have an extension of AI, EPS, SVG and sometimes PDF. Most PDFs do not contain vector art and simply saving a raster image as a PDF does not magically make an image vector (we end up explaining this a lot to customers). Raster art can also be embedded in any of the above file types, so you really do not know if it is vector art until the file is opened.
If you have an editing program like Illustrator, open the file. If you can zoom in and out without affecting the sharpness of the image and have the ability to change the colors of the graphic elements, then congrats, you have vector art. Don’t have a graphics program? No problem – send it over, we can open and let you know!
I DON’T HAVE VECTOR ART! WHAT CAN I DO?
If you hired a professional designer to create the artwork for you, chances are your design was made from a graphics program with vector art. The designer may have neglected to send you a file containing vector art. In this case, contact your designer and ask for a vector file; they should know exactly what you need. If you work for a large company or organization, your marketing department should have these files available to you.
If you discover you have non-vector art or are unable to obtain a vector file, we do have some options for a designer to recreate your design as vector art.
