Hear us out...

Vector Paths Between Pixels in Photoshop CS4

If you're at all familiar or have any experience in Photoshop using vector paths and shapes than you've probably noticed sometimes when you're making a rectangle that sometimes the lines just don't quite seem very sharp. If you've got a keen eye, you'll see exactly what I mean.

What's really going on here? For whatever reason, Adobe decided to allow vector paths to actually float BETWEEN pixels causing some amount of anti-aliasing to occur on sharp edges, thus making them not so sharp.

There are, as far as I can tell 3 ways to avoid this.

Have perfect mouse-eye coordination
Fix it after the fact
Make it so it doesn't happen in the first place

The first option is obviously NOT the best way to go...no one's that good. So, on to the second option. If you notice that this happened to your vector shapes than you need to zoom in nearly to the max 3200%, grab each anchor point on a given side with your Direct Selection tool (the white arrow - keyboard shortcut "A") and nudge the points into position with your arrow keys. Aside from this being time consuming and annoying, there's also potential for mathematical errors in the dimensions of your shape. What I mean is, because you're shifting individual sides of your shape one at a time, it's possible to turn your perfect 250x250 pixel square into a 252x248 pixel rectangle if you don't keep track of which way you need to nudge your paths. NOW, that leaves us with our third, final, and best option; avoid the situation all-together. This is another one of those "why in the world didn't Adobe turn this setting on by default instead of hiding it in a menu than no one opens with any kind of regularity?" Yes. There IS a setting to turn this off. With any of the vector tools selected, look up top at your menu bar.

So, now, look at the bottom, almost in the dead center of the menu, just to the right of the Custom Shape Tool. Click on the menu drop down. At the bottom right of that drop-down menu select the checkbox that reads "Snap to Pixels". There you go! Never again will you have to deal with fuzzy edged rectangles. NOW, if anyone knows how to do this with the OTHER vector tools (pen, line, polygon) drop me a line at steve@blindacre.com. Until then, in order to fix THOSE shapes, I suggest reverting to Option 2.

So, now, look at the bottom, almost in the dead center of the menu, just to the right of the Custom Shape Tool. Click on the menu drop down.

Hear us out...

Vector Paths Between Pixels in Photoshop CS4

Archives