The most informative I could find on raster images is at the related link below.
Raster printing refers to the method of printing which uses the raster image processor. The raster printing usually produces a raster image called a bitmap.
raster image = monitor, laser printer or ink-jet printer vector image = graphics plotter
A bitmap graphic is also known as a raster image.
Digital printing begins with creation of the document file ‰ÛÒ the words and images that will print on the page. Regardless of what program is used to create the file or any of its components, the file is converted into a raster graphics image. A raster is a grid of x and y coordinates on a display space; a raster image file identifies which of those coordinates to illuminate. A raster image file is sometimes referred to as a bit map because it contains information that is directly mapped to the display grid. BMP, TIFF, GIF and JPEG are all examples of raster image file types. The action of converting a file to a raster image file is known as raster image processing or RIPping.
Photoshop is a raster image editor. Raster and Bitmap are two words for the same thing, so Photoshop is raster or Bitmap image editor, somewhere you will see raster, somewhere bitmap as explanation but it is basically same thing. Photoshop is primarily designed to work with bitmap images which are raster images in other words.
raster graphics cannot be resized without losing image quality
Common examples of raster devices are computer monitors (e.g. cathode ray tube, LCD). The term "raster device" means a device that is composed of discrete image samples or pixels.
Raster IS a type of image data another type is VECTOR.Raster deals with picture elements (pixels) these are discrete bits of the picture , small dots or swuares that together make up the entire image).Vectors deal with mathematical expressions for lines and areas. You can zoom in invinitely into a vector image and neve get blocks or jaggged edges which appear in raster images.
Formatter
A Raster images is made from pixels and can be saved in any number of well known formats such as JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF...
Binary image (i think)
Raster scan, or raster scanning: is the pattern of image detection and reconstruction in television, and is the pattern of image storage and transmission used in most computer image systems. The word raster comes from the Latin word for a rake, as the pattern left by a rake resembles the parallel lines of a scanning raster. Picture element: In a raster scan, an image is cut up into successive samples called pixels, or picture elements, along scan lines. Each scan line can be transmitted as it is read from the detector, as in television systems, or can be stored as a row of pixel values in an array in a computer system. On a television receiver or computer monitor, the scan line is turned back to a line across an image, in the same order. After each scan line, the position of the scan line is advanced, typically downward across the image in a process known as vertical scanning, and a next scan line is detected, transmitted, stored, retrieved, or displayed. This ordering of pixels by rows is known as raster order, or raster scan order.