Creating vector shapes/icons without blurry edges in Photoshop CS5

I’ve noticed lately that many of designers are creating graphics and icons using rasterized shapes and gradients. This is fine if you want to make something quick and dirty but you run into a huge problem if you ever need to scale the image up. Since it is made up of completely rasterized shapes, scaling up will cause some intense pixellation.

Most may not consider Photoshop a vector art program but, if you know how to use it right, creating vector shapes, gradient fills and icons that are completely scalable, is quite simple.

The problem with vector shapes in Photoshop is that they automatically try to anti-alias themselves when their paths don’t fall on a full pixel. This causes slight variations in pixels and creates a blurring effect.

This can be fixed easily by altering the paths of the shape to fall on full pixels (represented by the grid). Select the white arrow tool and fix the shape one side at a time.

The more you zoom in the more precise you can get with the path. You will notice when the path is sitting on a full pixel because the jagged edges will be gone and the path will line up with the grid. When scaling it up you may have to fix some edges that aren’t on full pixels but at least you won’t have to re-create the entire icon!

I hope this helps some of the frustrated designers out there. Please let me know if you have any questions or improvements in the comments section. Thanks for reading.