# Vector to Raster Conversion

Vector to raster conversion in Earth Engine is handled by the
`featureCollection.reduceToImage()` method. This method assigns pixels under
each feature the value of the specified property. This example uses the counties data
to create an image representing the land area of each county:

### Code Editor (JavaScript)

```javascript
// Load a collection of US counties.
var counties = ee.FeatureCollection('TIGER/2018/Counties');

// Make an image out of the land area attribute.
var landAreaImg = counties
  .filter(ee.Filter.notNull(['ALAND']))
  .reduceToImage({
    properties: ['ALAND'],
    reducer: ee.Reducer.first()
});

// Display the county land area image.
Map.setCenter(-99.976, 40.38, 5);
Map.addLayer(landAreaImg, {
  min: 3e8,
  max: 1.5e10,
  palette: ['FCFDBF', 'FDAE78', 'EE605E', 'B63679', '711F81', '2C105C']
});
```
Python setup

See the [Python Environment](https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides/python_install) page for information on the Python API and using
`geemap` for interactive development.

```python
import ee
import geemap.core as geemap
```

### Colab (Python)

```python
# Load a collection of US counties.
counties = ee.FeatureCollection('TIGER/2018/Counties')

# Make an image out of the land area attribute.
land_area_img = counties.filter(ee.Filter.notNull(['ALAND'])).reduceToImage(
    properties=['ALAND'], reducer=ee.Reducer.first()
)

# Display the county land area image.
m = geemap.Map()
m.set_center(-99.976, 40.38, 5)
m.add_layer(
    land_area_img,
    {
        'min': 3e8,
        'max': 1.5e10,
        'palette': ['FCFDBF', 'FDAE78', 'EE605E', 'B63679', '711F81', '2C105C'],
    },
)
m
```

Specify a reducer to indicate how to aggregate properties of
overlapping features. In the previous example, since there is no overlap, an
`ee.Reducer.first()` is sufficient. As in [this
example](https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/guides/reducers_reduce_columns), pre-filter the data to eliminate nulls that can not be turned into an image.
The output should look something like Figure 1, which maps a color gradient to
county size. Like all image-outputting reducers in Earth Engine, the
scale is dynamically set by the output. In this case, the scale corresponds to the
zoom level in the Code Editor.
![reduceToImage output](https://developers.google.com/static/earth-engine/images/ReduceToImage_counties.png) Figure 1. The result of `reduceToImage()` using the 'ALAND' (land area) property of the 'TIGER/2018/Counties' `FeatureCollection`.