A graphic's appearance on paper is usually pretty straightforward, no matter how it was created. Electronically, however, the creation method of a graphic ultimately determines how well it can be viewed on a computer monitor.

A graphic can be created

• Manually,
• With any graphics program,
• In any file format and with any internal structure.

Such creation methods  hardly influence how an illustration is displayed on paper, yet these conditions have a large impact on graphics created electronically.

Electronically
If an illustration is distributed electronically, and is mainly displayed and used on a screen, then the way it was created does immediately and substantially influence how it must be handled in order to achieve an optimal representation result.

Raster files
A manually created illustration on paper can only be scanned and distributed as a raster file. Unfortunately, raster files are large enough that they are limited in terms of scalability and transmission times.

Vector drawings
A vector drawing that was created on a computer has some general advantages over a raster graphic. The exact advantages depend on the file structure itself. For example, suppose unnecessary areas in an illustration are covered with a white layer.  As a result, these areas disappear in the representation -- on paper as well as on screen. When displayed on screen, however, the whole file is read and transmitted, including the covered parts.