Digital Graphics

Digital Graphics are used in every industry as there are many examples that could be named like: TV,Game or Film posters, Game Covers, Advertisement on Billboards and Newspapers.

When creating Digital Graphics on certain pieces of software like Photoshop (of which is a Raster). Raster graphics are the most common and are used for digital photos,Web Graphics, icons, and other types of images. Raster graphics are images of which has a dot matrix data structure that are representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of colour, that is viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium.

Whereas some people use Adobe Illustrator which is a Vector. Vector graphics is the use of polygons to represent images in the computer graphics. Vector graphics are based on vectors, which lead through locations called control points or nodes. Vector graphics is the creation of digital images through a specific sequence of commands or mathematical statements that place lines and shapes in a given 2D (2 dimensional)  or 3D (3 dimensional) space.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Rasters

Advantages

• Grid-cell systems are very compatible with raster-based output devices, e.g. electrostatic plotters, graphic terminals.
• The inherent nature of raster maps, e.g. one attribute maps, is ideally suited for mathematical modeling and quantitative analysis.
• Due to the nature of the data storage technique data analysis is usually easy to program and quick to perform.
• The geographic location of each cell is implied by its position in the cell matrix. Accordingly, other than an origin point, e.g. bottom left corner, no geographic coordinates are stored.
• Discrete data, e.g. forestry stands, is accommodated equally well as continuous data, e.g. elevation data, and facilitates the integrating of the two data types.

Disadvantages

• The cell size determines the resolution at which the data is represented.;
• It is especially difficult to adequately represent linear features depending on the cell resolution. Accordingly, network linkages are difficult to establish.
• Processing of associated attribute data may be cumbersome if large amounts of data exists. Raster maps inherently reflect only one attribute or characteristic for an area.
• Since most input data is in vector form, data must undergo vector-to-raster conversion. Besides increased processing requirements this may introduce data integrity concerns due to generalization and choice of inappropriate cell size.
• Most output maps from grid-cell systems do not conform to high-quality cartographic needs.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Vectors

Advantages

• Data can be represented at its original resolution and form without generalization.
• Graphic output is usually more aesthetically pleasing (traditional cartographic representation);
• Accurate geographic location of data is maintained.
• Allows for efficient encoding of topology, and as a result more efficient operations that require topological information, e.g. proximity, network analysis.
• Since most data, e.g. hard copy maps, is in vector form no data conversion is required.

Disadvantages

• Continuous data, such as elevation data, is not effectively represented in vector form. Usually substantial data generalization or interpolation is required for these data layers.
• Algorithms for manipulative and analysis functions are complex and may be processing intensive. Often, this inherently limits the functionality for large data sets, e.g. a large number of features.
• The location of each vertex needs to be stored explicitly.
• Spatial analysis and filtering within polygons is impossible.
• For effective analysis, vector data must be converted into a topological structure. This is often processing intensive and usually requires extensive data cleaning. As well, topology is static, and any updating or editing of the vector data requires re-building of the topology

I received this information of the advantages and disadvantages of the vector and raster from a website called GIS introduction by David J. Buckey, with the website called

http://planet.botany.uwc.ac.za/nisl/GIS/GIS_primer/page_19.htm