Raster graphics

In computer graphics and digital photography, a raster graphic, raster image, or simply raster is a digital image made up of a rectangular grid of tiny colored (usually square) so-called pixels. Unlike vector graphics which use mathematical formulas to describe shapes and lines, raster images store the exact color of each pixel, making them ideal for photographs and images with complex colors and details. Raster images are characterized by their dimensions (width and height in pixels) and color depth (the number of bits per pixel). They can be displayed on computer displays, printed on paper, or viewed on other media, and are stored in various image file formats.

The printing and prepress industries know raster graphics as contones (from "continuous tones"). In contrast, line art is usually implemented as vector graphics in digital systems.

Many raster manipulations map directly onto the mathematical formalisms of linear algebra, where mathematical objects of matrix structure are of central concern.

Raster or gridded data may be the result of a gridding procedure.

The word "raster" has its origins in the Latin rastrum (a rake), which is derived from radere (to scrape). It originates from the raster scan of cathode-ray tube (CRT) video monitors, which draw the image line by line by magnetically or electrostatically steering a focused electron beam. By association, it can also refer to a rectangular grid of pixels. The word rastrum is now used to refer to a device for drawing musical staff lines.

The fundamental strategy underlying the raster data model is the tessellation of a plane, into a two-dimensional array of squares, each called a cell or pixel (from "picture element"). In digital photography, the plane is the visual field as projected onto the image sensor; in computer art, the plane is a virtual canvas; in geographic information systems, the plane is a projection of the Earth's surface. The size of each square pixel, known as the resolution or support, is constant across the grid.

A single numeric value is then stored for each pixel. For most images, this value is a visible color, but other measurements are possible, even numeric codes for qualitative categories. Each raster grid has a specified pixel format, the data type for each number. Common pixel formats are binary, grayscale, palettized, and full-color, where color depth determines the fidelity of the colors represented, and color space determines the range of color coverage (which is often less than the full range of human color vision). Most modern color raster formats represent color using 24 bits (over 16 million distinct colors), with 8 bits (values 0–255) for each color channel (red, green, and blue). The digital sensors used for remote sensing and astronomy are often able to detect and store wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum; the large CCD bitmapped sensor at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory captures 3.2 gigapixels in a single image (6.4 GB raw), over six color channels which exceed the spectral range of human color vision.

Most computer images are stored in raster graphics formats or compressed variations, including GIF, JPEG, and PNG, which are popular on the World Wide Web. A raster data structure is based on a (usually rectangular, square-based) tessellation of the 2D plane into cells, each containing a single value. To store the data in a file, the two-dimensional array must be serialized. The most common way to do this is a row-major format, in which the cells along the first (usually top) row are listed left to right, followed immediately by those of the second row, and so on.