Rastrowego

Rastrowego is the genitive form of the Polish adjective rastrowy, used to describe things related to a raster. In computing and digital imaging, rastrowy denotes representations that are based on a regular grid of discrete cells, or pixels, each carrying a value such as color, intensity, or metadata.

Rastrowe representations, or raster graphics, consist of a matrix of pixels arranged in rows and columns. The appearance of an image depends on the resolution (width by height) and the color depth, which determines how many colors or gray levels each pixel can hold. Raster graphics are well suited to photographs and detailed imagery where smooth color gradients are important, but scaling typically reduces quality, producing pixelation.

In contrast to vector graphics, which describe images through geometric shapes and mathematical formulas, rastrowe images are not resolution-independent. They require different processing pipelines, including rasterization (the conversion of vector data to raster form) and various forms of compression to reduce file size.

Common raster file formats include JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF in general imaging, with specialized formats such as GeoTIFF and ERDAS IMG used in geographic information systems (GIS) to store spatially referenced raster data. Applications span digital photography, scanning, satellite imagery, medical imaging, and map rendering.

Key advantages of rastrowe data are straightforward rendering on most display devices and direct representation of complex color information. Limitations include larger file sizes for high-resolution images and loss of quality when scaling.