I draw dudes, that's essentially what I do. I can muster environments and stuff, but even that I usually need extensive reference material for.

Even more hopelessly far out of my grasp is graphic design, and I honestly have nobody to ask about these things. Currently working on a website, and sometimes working on logos and stuff that require this type of knowledge, I really would greatly appreciate some input. Of course, if anyone else has questions about this subject, go wild in this thread. Maybe we can all help eachother out.


So, for starters I'd like to know a (probably) super basic thing. When creating graphics that is purely text for a website or for some other purpose, where the text needs to be sharp and small/low res, how do you best go about doing that?

To clarify the issue I'm having:

If I use photoshop to type something using a fancy font, no anti aliasing, in a big size, then shrink the image down to a size suitable for the context it's to be presented in, I end up with what I percieve as an unnecessarily fussy looking picture. If instead I simply use a font size that suits the site to begin with, I inevitably end up with an "uneven" looking text unless I switch on anti aliasing. Anti aliasing however gives me the same result as the aforementioned shrinking of a larger pic.

When I resize, I use the "best for reduction" setting, too, which does make it sharper, but still fussier than I imagine it has to be.

Perhaps it's all in my head and it's as sharp as I can get it, but I'd like to know what the standard practice for this stuff is. Using a different application for it? Illustrator perhaps?

Thanks for replying.

Yeah I do save them as gif, I just get the impression that in smoothing the edges, it adds more smoothing than it has to. I mean if you had really round edges and fine, dynamic detail, more smoothing is necessary for it to look good, but with text I really just want to - literally - take the edges off some.

Maybe I'm just imagining that my text is fussier than normal though.

I vaguely remember back when I was making some comics for print that someone recommended that I use vector graphics for the text. Deadlines and me being late as always, I just went with what I knew, which was obscenely high resolution (since my print stuff is usually b/w) bitmap without text smoothing in photoshop.

Print is a different world from pixely computery graphics for sure, but maybe there's something to the vector stuff even in regards to this.

ANOTHER PUZZLE SOLVED! (okay it's the first puzzle in this thread but.. hey, video game reference > accuracy)

A friend of a friend possessed the know-how for this particular problem. Apparently, even if you use AA on your text, "native" resolutions (multiply/divide by the right increments from the font's original size) still matter even if you apply AA. If the font is slightly misshaped from being an uneven resolution/size, the AA will try to rectify this and you get a very fussy looking image.

Divide the px size right, however, and the AA will almost exclusively be applied to the pixelated diagonal edges and stuff like that.



And by no means do I intend to stop drawing dudes. :P

I'm like, the exact opposite. I'm a pretty good designer but I struggle at drawing dudes. I've been practicing a good bit lately, but my illustration skills are still not as strong as I'd like. One of the few benefits of being unemployed is that I have time to work on that stuff. Then again, I should be working on a wider variety of things right now, so I can get my new portfolio online finally and start getting more work. All in good time I guess. I lack focus.

I'm still a pretty competent image maker, but it would really assist me greatly if I had a better grasp on certain illustration skills. At the very least it would be nice to require less reference for illustration, if not just so I could work on certain projects more quickly. I'm mostly an Adobe Illustrator pro (and print designer) though, but if you have any other photoshop questions and can't find someone to bounce problems off of, feel free to hit me up on FB or AIM or Steam or whatever.

And there's definitely room for vectors online. Vectors rule!

The new bristle brush tool in AI CS5 is pretty amazing too. I haven't used it much yet though.

Illustrator has come a long way in recent years too. CS2's additions (live paint + live trace) were pretty great, and CS4's blob brush is equally impressive. CS5 brings in a lot of great new features too--the bristle brush, the width tool (variable width paths FTW!), the perspective grid, draw inside (draw behind was CS..4?), and more. It's amazing how they keep finding new great ways to improve this program. It also amazes me that there's still no good build in halftone tool in Illustrator! Phatasm's plug-in takes care of that adequately though.

Thanks for the pointers. The best tips I can give for an illustrator noob is to master the pen tool and become very familiar with the pathfinder functions. Other than that, just experiment. I actually find myself using the pen less and less now that the tablet tools (blob brush, and hell, even the pencil if you don't mind doing a little clean-up) are improving so dramatically with every version, but it's still the most powerful basic tool you'll find in illustrator, especially if you're a mouse user. Understanding how to build and edit objects becomes second nature after a while, but there are a ton of different methods for constructing images in AI. Getting to know vectors should actually be pretty easy if you're already familiar with 3D tools though, since working with and editing paths should already be part of your process.

Just don't be afraid to play around. There's so many tools and options when it comes to building work in illustrator. You'll almost undoubtedly start to lean on certain tools more than others, but becoming familiar with all of your options will give you a larger arsenal when it comes to solving problems. I hope you enjoy it. I love it.

Sweet, I'll definitely take you up on that.


I do way too little goofing around for the sake of the goofing and learning. I always sit there with my pants firmly around my ankles and have to learn entire applications when I finally need something specific done in them. That's what I get for mainly being good at stuff I've found to be fun ever since I learned stuff as part of.. you know.. developing basic human skills.

Outside of learning new mechanics in games, I've been getting dangerously reluctant to learn things for the thrill of just having stuff make sense and solving problems. I've been learning CSS/some php lately in order to use Wordpress though, and that is slowly feeling more and more like a fun puzzle, so maybe that'll revive my keenness to learn.

Yea.. I think it's important to spend some time outside of your comfort zone sometimes. It definitely helps you learn new things. I think I've been spending too much time outside of my comfort zone lately in a way though. I have really need to output some good editorial and identity work so I have something to show potential clients. I'm not happy with a lot of what I have to show in that department, because it's all ancient and dated and frankly not up to my current standards anymore. It's not fun to show people stuff that you don't actually like. I really need to get back into that stuff instead of spending so much time trying to work up my illustration skills. Design as communication and problem solving has to come first for me right now.

I've imported a "blocky" text graphic into Illustrator and I'm trying to trace it to convert it to vector, but in doing so it gets all wobbly looking and full of curves.

I've tried the presets, "lettering" "single color logo" and so on, but none of them maintain the sharp edges. Is there a way to trace something and keep the shape exactly the same?

Live trace is a fickle beast. It's useful, but I've never been completely satisfied with its initial results.

You could select the delete anchor point tool (the minus key/grouped with the pen tool) and clean up the paths manually, trace them with the pen tool from scratch manually, or use a higher resolution source to get better edges. Whenever I use live trace I always have to clean up after it. It never gives me the results I want without some additional work. Try using smart guides when you're cleaning stuff up too, it's not always beneficial but it could be for this task (control+u)--and if you're manually tracing from reference, put the reference on a separate layer, double click it and reduce images to 50%, and then put your work layer into outline mode (alt+click the eyeball thingy on the layers panel) for a better view of what you're doing.

Just a few thoughts. Live trace is really helpful but it's not terribly accurate and that becomes pretty apparent with non-organic shapes. That doesn't mean it can't give you a good result if you tweak its settings, but I usually just resort to getting it close enough and then do some manual clean-up. You can always try playing with reducing the points from object > path > simplify.. but I'd probably just break out the pen tool palette and get on in there. It's not the quickest method, but I'm really particular about details.

There could also be a more obvious answer, but I just drove (well.. passangered) 1000 miles in a car and I'm tired. This is the best I can do for now :P

Tips filling my to-try basket anyhow, thanks both of you.

It's a fairly one-time deal in this case as it's going into a main logo and won't be used elsewhere, so doing it "by hand" is probably easiest and well worth the effort. The font isn't crazy at all, which is probably the problem in this case. It's not organic enough, as you point out.

I'm gonna do something unprecedented and actually mention a problem in the same breath as the solution to it.

I had an issue with an older version of Photoshop years ago where my tablet would randomly not work on some strokes in photoshop. All pressure sensitivity would randomly be gone, leaving a "max pressure" stroke, and then for the next few strokes it'd work again. I got rid of that problem somehow, but with the latest Photoshop it came back.

Mind bendingly mind boggles later I found a solution on the Adobe forums.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/373929

If you ever have this problem, that there appears to be the solution. I'm gonna try it now.

That actually happens to me in illustrator sometimes (cinqtiq 12WX).. but it doesn't really bother me much. It literally comes back the next stroke. It seems to happen most frequently when I alt-tab back to the program. I do have a problem with my tablet driver sometimes though. I've had it just up and stop working multiple times, and I needed to reinstall the driver to get it to recognize the tablet again. Sorta a pain in the ass.