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Working with photoshop, I've noticed that at really small size the pen tool filling is not so sharp when required to attach to a path/shape border:

enter image description here

As you see I have used pen tool aiming at guides, the handle is correctly placed on the guide perimeter, however the fill color is not starting from the shape border but a little shifted on the right/bottom.

Any idea on how to make the filling more precise?

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    That rectangle is ~6 pixels wide, not much you can do about it other than make a bigger rectangle – Cai May 26 '17 at 9:25
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The quides are arbitarily placed, but all fills are pixels. You have placed the quides between pixel borders.

ADDENDUM: I have here a stroked path. It has been drawn along the quides. The 1 px wide stroke has been taken its place at the nearest pixels.

enter image description here

In Photoshop you must be ready for 1 px ambiquities until you fill pixels individually and watch the result on a display that show actual pixels as is or integer times enlargened

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  • the document is measured in millimeters, I needed to make a small rectangle 0,5mm wide and it is not matching with the pixel, how can I do? – Ritardi.Net May 26 '17 at 9:06
  • @Ritardi.Net exact fit needs total number of pixels/ the wanted width. But is that really a problem? The path is exact, only the shown filligs are made of the current pixels. They will be different as soon as you zoom the image into normal onscreen watching size. – user287001 May 26 '17 at 9:30
  • scaling down the image from 290x290 pixel to 60x60 also produce some odd results, in particular small gaps such as the above (im subtracting from a shape with that rectangle) gets filled with "shades" of nearby pixels. Since I'm designing a geometric logo, what is the best approach to be able to design it in normal size while also being able to scale it down preserving its look? – Ritardi.Net May 26 '17 at 10:05
  • @Ritardi.Net Scaling down without changing the look: 60 is not an integral part of 290. No way to keep the looks. You will get heavy anti aliasing blur if you use smooth scaling such as bicubic. Nearest neighbour method make plusminus 1 pix errors. If it were 300pix instead of 290, all 5 pix areas would transform perfectly. – user287001 May 26 '17 at 10:36
  • I can do 300x300 will this allow me to make a section of 60 while preserving it? I also noticed that the blur is more strong on horizontal gaps rather than vertical. I have another gap of 60 height horizontally which has even more blur – Ritardi.Net May 26 '17 at 10:59
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You can't fill part of a pixel, only whole pixels. A pixel is the smallest unit of a raster image that can be edited.

If you fill your background with a colour, you will see the pixel grid when you zoom in. Use these to place your guides/paths.

Screenshot - Guides/Paths match pixels

If you want six pixels across to measure 0.5mm, then you will need to set the resolution setting to 120 Pixels Per Centimetre.

120 pixels per centimetre = 12 pixels per mm, therefore 0.5mm = 6 pixels

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