Does rasterization in Illustrator reduce quality when printing?

Question

I am preparing a template for a client from scratch, drawing with shapes in Illustrator. Client wants the finished product in PDF. I noticed that when I saved it in PDF, my vector shapes are STILL editable if I try hard enough. I do not want the client to have the ability to edit.So I thought of rasterizing (of course saving my own copy in vector) the shapes and then exporting to PDF, but will this reduce the print quality? Sorry haven't got an actual printer to test.

Answer 1

Rasterizing means that you are forcing certain dimensions & resolution to a graphic.

Whether it affects the quality will depend on what you choose for those values. You can rasterize a graphic at 400 dpi and it will still look fine on a home printer.

If you rasterize at 72 dpi, chances are you will see the rasterization (jagged edges) on a print

Also illustrator has an option to preserve the file editing when you save as pdf. If that is turned OFF, your client should not be able to edit it AFAIK. The other option on a Mac is to use the MacOS print dialog (file>print) but create a pdf from there instead of printing to a printer (bottom right of the print dialog box)