What Is Rasterization?

It's your favorite word in the world: Rasterization. You know, because it sounds like a word you'd use to describe how much fun you're having at a party. It's also an odd word, making it even more fun to say out loud. Rasterization is the process of turning electronic data or signals into projected images. It's the opposite of conversion, except instead of taking your life savings and converting them into a goat, you take your life savings and transform it into a goat in a video game. Rasterization is how most modern display systems turn electronic data or signals into projected images, such as video or still graphics. It is typically a process of identifying the needs of a specific media configuration, then allocating resources so that images are efficiently and optimally projected on the display device. The history of rasterization is a long and storied one. It dates back to the early days of television technology when CRT monitors were the norm. These monitors scanned lines across their display screens, which gradually accumulated into complete images, unlike how a video game system works today. Computers had their way of doing things: They didn't use CRTs for quite some time after that. Instead, they used other types of monitors that could only display one color at a time and thus required more complex algorithms to create images. It wasn't until the 1980s and '90s that televisions started using CRT technology, so you can see how long this technology has been around! Rasterized graphics are often compared with image vectors. While rasterization typically compiles scan lines or pixels on a bitmap, vectors incorporate mathematical functions to create images based on geometric shapes, angles and curves. The main difference between rasterized graphics and vector graphics is that rasterized graphic files are made up of pixels. In contrast, vector graphics are made up of geometric shapes such as circles, squares and triangles.