How to Achieve Pixel Hinting Perfection in Photoshop

[treehouse™ presents] 0:01 [Quick Tips: How to Achieve Pixel Perfection in Adobe Photoshop] 0:02 [with Allison Grayce] 0:04 Hi, I'm Allison Grayce. 0:05 In this Treehouse Quick Tip, we're going to learn how to 0:07 deal with unwanted anti-aliasing 0:09 in Photoshop and achieve pixel perfection 0:11 when working with vector shapes. 0:13 This method is referred to as pixel hinting. 0:15 In this Quick Tip, I'll be using Adobe Illustrator CS6 0:18 and Adobe Photoshop CS6. 0:21 Now, I've gone ahead and created a simple logo 0:24 in Illustrator, and I want to bring that 0:26 logo to use in a design I'm working on 0:28 in Photoshop. 0:30 So, Ctrl-A to Select All, 0:32 then Ctrl-C to Copy, 0:34 and let's navigate on over to Photoshop. 0:36 So, let's go ahead and Ctrl-V to Paste the logo. 0:39 Photoshop gives us a dialog box 0:42 that asks how we want to paste in our vector shape. 0:44 Since we want to be able to edit the paths, 0:47 we'll paste it in as a shape layer. 0:49 So I'm going to go ahead and scale the logo 0:51 to my desired size, because if I resize 0:53 the shape after pixel hinting, 0:56 I'd need to do it all over again. 0:58 We're going to make this logo white. 1:00 [mouse clicking] 1:03 Perfect. 1:07 So, let's go ahead and zoom in a little bit closer here. 1:09 If you notice, there is some unwanted 1:12 anti-aliasing happening, 1:14 especially around these horizontal lines here, 1:16 and what that does, if we zoom back out, 1:18 is it actually makes the logo appear a little bit blurry. 1:20 This happens to a lot of vector shapes, because the paths 1:24 are not completely taking up 1 whole pixel. 1:26 They're taking up a little more or a little less. 1:29 Sometimes, for it to appear perfect, we'll need to manually 1:31 adjust the shapes. 1:34 Now, in CS6, we'll need to head to Photoshop, 1:36 Preferences, 1:38 and General, 1:40 and head on over to the very last check box here 1:42 and uncheck Snap Vector Tools 1:44 and Transforms to Pixel Grid. Press Okay. 1:47 Turning this option off will let us manually 1:50 adjust where the paths fit into Photoshop's pixel grid. 1:52 You'll want to turn it back on if you're drawing shapes in Photoshop, later. 1:55 So, let's go ahead and right-click and select the shape. 1:59 So, we can see the paths that make up the vector shape, now. 2:02 First let's go ahead and zoom in on 2:06 the icon, here. 2:09 As you can see, this part of the paper airplane 2:11 is not a perfectly straight line, 2:13 and because of this, it's causing some fuzziness in the logo. 2:15 So, if we navigate over to the Toolbar, 2:18 and select our Direct Selection tool, 2:20 we can grab the anchors on our path, 2:22 then we can use the Right arrow 2:26 to nudge it to the right. 2:28 We can see now that the line is beginning to appear 2:30 sharper, and we'll do the same thing for this anchor. 2:32 Now, let's move on down to this horizontal line, here. 2:36 Click on the top-left and top-right anchors of this line, 2:39 remembering to hold Shift, 2:43 and let's go ahead and use the bottom arrow 2:46 on our keyboard to nudge it down, 2:49 and for the bottom-left and bottom-right anchors, 2:51 we will nudge it up a bit. 2:53 So, if we zoom out, we can see how much better 2:55 our logo is beginning to look. 2:57 So, moving down to the type, 3:00 make sure to be careful--text should and will 3:02 have anti-aliasing, especially around the curves 3:04 where letters should appear smooth. 3:06 So, only adjust the areas of the vector shape 3:09 that should have a sharp, clean edge. 3:11 We'll just fix the top and bottom of the letters 3:13 and leave the rest alone. 3:15 To move around the canvas when you're zoomed in this close, 3:18 just hold down the Spacebar. 3:20 [mouse clicking] 3:23 So, if we zoom out back to 100%, 3:47 we can see that our logo is very crisp and sharp. 3:50 Pixel hinting and snapping your vector shapes 3:53 to grid will result in a much cleaner, crisper design. 3:56 Training your eye to be aware of the overall design 3:58 down to each and every pixel 4:01 is what will set a good designer apart from a great designer. 4:03 If you'd like to see more advanced videos and tutorials 4:06 like this one, go to TeamTreehouse.com, 4:09 and start learning for free. 4:12 [treehouse™] 4:14