Member Avatar for ssodangi

Hi everyone,
I use the paintbrush tool at 4 pixel size to stroke a curvy path I have made using the pen tool in Photoshop 5.5, but instead of the resulting curve being smooth and beutifull it turns out very jaggy and ugly, could someone please tell me where I've gone wrong?
Thanks in advance
Samaila

  • 3 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 119 Views
  • 1 Year Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by posvar

Dani AI

Generated

Brief follow-up to the replies from , and with a few practical checks that aren’t in the thread yet.

Try these in Photoshop 5.5:

  • Use the Brush tool (not the Pencil). Open the Brushes palette (Window > Brushes) and lower the Hardness (so edges are softer) and reduce the Spacing slider to a very low value (a few percent). High spacing or a very hard brush leaves visible “dabs” or stair-steps when a path is stroked.
  • Stroke the path from the Paths palette (select the path, then choose Stroke Path and pick the Brush). In that dialog, make sure you’re using the Brush and not the Pencil; if you have a tablet, test with and without Simulate Pressure.
  • Inspect the path itself: too many anchors or poorly adjusted handles produce segments that look jagged when rasterized. Use the Direct Selection/Convert Point tools to remove extra anchors and smooth handles so the Bezier is truly curved.
  • If you need truly smooth, hairline curves, use a larger working size and then downsample to final size (stroke at 2x and reduce the image to 50% with bicubic resampling). That reduces pixel quantization on tiny strokes.
  • Final cleanup: view at 100% to judge, and if needed apply a very light Gaussian Blur (tiny radius) then re-sharpen slightly — use sparingly.

If these don’t help, mention the brush tip shape and spacing values you tried and whether the Pencil tool was used; that narrows the root cause quickly.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for rixius

Just ctrl+click on your layer, and go to edit > stroke.

Easier way to stroke any layer/image

Member Avatar for posvar

the only thing I can think of is if your resolution on the file is set too low.

If this is a web graphic, go ahead and preview it - perhaps it will show up fine once you preview to save it as a JPG or GIF or PNG. For some reason, my photoshop does that sometimes - but when I save it as a web graphic, it's very smooth. just a thought.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.