When is it worth it to vectorize an image for printing?

Question

I've never done prints before, but I've worked with AI for vectoring logos for laser cutting, so I'm familiar with the concept of raster images vs vector images. I know that for a simple image (like a logo) with clean edges and few colors is easy to vectorize and will turn out nicely for a large print. Obviously photographs are a different story, trying to vectorize a photo simply wouldn't work, you'd just end up losing detail, colors, and distorting the image.

I want to print this artwork, but at the given resolution and desired print size, there wouldn't be enough PPI. I did play around with vectorizing the image and it turned out surprisingly satisfactory. So even though I'm not recovering or adding any additional detail to the image, would printing a vector image versus a raster image let me be able to "cheat" some extra quality- i.e. print at a higher PPI without blurring the image or seeing big ugly individual pixels? I've attached the image below along with a comparison of the vector image vs the raster image.

Answer 1

If you can achieve a sufficiently detailed tracing in Illustrator, then yes. The vector tracing would absolutely allow you to enlarge the artwork a great deal more. Edges in the tracing aren't going to change or become "pixelated" unlike the raster artwork.

Viewing distance may be a factor, though. As you can see zooming in... the tracing starts to show "chunks" of color rather than smooth transitions. The same color separation/edges will remain when you merely enlarge the tracing. That may be fine. It can convey more of a stylistic feel. And from a distance these "chunks" wouldn't really be that visible.

The reason this works for this particular image is that it's already stylistic and not photo-real. So the sharp color changes are not seen as unnatural or aberrant when looking at the overall image. Artwork tends to have a bit more leeway with tracing than photographic content.