Comparing the anti-aliasing properties of Illustrator and Photoshop (cs4)
I’ve read (can’t think of where at the moment: UPDATE: Jonathan Hicks pimps fireworks here:http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/branding-firefox ) articles applauding the pixel preview functionality of AI, especially when it comes to designing low resolution icons. I investigated this a bit and here’s what I found:
16x16 circle in Illustrator, snapped to 1x1 pixel grid
16x16 circle in Photoshop, made with a shape, snapped to grid
Compare the above. Both are 16×16 pixel circles, but the Photoshop one is superior. Note how Illustrator adds grey pixels to the left and top of the icon. I’m not sure why it does this, maybe someone can explain, but for now I’m sticking with Photoshop for my icon design. Here they are at actual size:
Can you guess which one is which (hover over each for the answer). IMHO, the one on the right is better.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
oh so that is why it looks so much better. I’ve been struggling with Fireworks for years, because I love it’s vector drawing tools, but hate the fact that I can never get curves to look good. Know I know why.