If you are into graphic and web design I'm sure you've bumped into something like Raster and Vector images, photograph are example of Raster images, they are also known as bitmap or Jpegs, the original animated cartoon on it's raw file are actually a vector base but when they are converted into a movie file they became raster images.

Until now the war between raster and vector base hasn't been settled specially when it comes to logo, I'm in favor of using vector base software when creating a logo specially if the clients are asking for a quality that will be printed out as brochures and/or into a 20 foot high billboards.

Vectors are mathematically-defined geometric shapes-lines, objects and fills, they are being made by mathematically putting together nodes and points to create a shape which means resizing a vector image will multiply the factor according to how much you wanted them to be. (This is useful on printing such 20 foot billboards without losing quality and running out of storage for file size.)

On the other hand Raster images are being defined by pixels, it can also be used for prints by creating your subject on a higher DPI (dot per inch) platform, but the higher the DPI the higher the file size will be, once you finished your raster work, it will never have the same quality when you resize it to higher multiplicand.

For more about this subject you can read a very interesting article here at designwashere.com.

It is wise to use a vector base software on creating logos specially if it will be printed, I'm not an illustrator guy and I still don't have that much power over illustrator (but sooner I will), so on this tutorial I will be teaching you how to convert your raster base logo into a vector base using a certain software called vector magic.

This is common on designers who found themselves in trouble just because their clients failed to give them a vector image or even a high resolution of their logo, for those kind of instances there are two ways to solve it, one is to recreate it using a graphic software, and the second one is to convert into a vector base.

We are going to do the second one using vector magic, you can convert limited numbers of raster image online at vectormagic.com, you can also purchase their desktop edition, by the way we are going to use the desktop edition on this tutorial.

We will be using this logo as our subject.

First open your vector magic desktop edition and drag our Raster base logo into vector magic.

Then on the right side there are three option available, Choose Basic.

Then another three option will come out, choose Logo with Blended edges.

Then you'll be asked to choose an option depends on the quality of Raster image you are going to convert, for our subject I choose High.

Then the next three options has something to do with the colors, black and white, Fixed colors and Flexible colors, Flexible colors are usually applied for photos and cartoons which contains gradients, but since we are trying to convert a logo which has 3 flat color then it is wise to choose the second option which is Fixed colors.

Then choose among the set of palette that has been auto generated by vector magic for you, all sets are made base from the color available on the raster base image that we dragged on the stage.

Then save it on your hard drive.

There is also a bitmap export option for those who wants to authomatically have it on JPG and PNG format for web purpose.

and this is our final result looks like.

ofcourse it's not in .EPS format coz the browser dont have the power to preview an EPS file.

Here are some more examples of converted raster base logo into a vector base logo.

if they are pixelated and it is really in bad condition you can recreate it using photoshop then convert it to a vector, visit my new article on "Recreating pixilated and low resolution logo."

discuss this topic to forum