#Photoshop vector icons how to#
#Photoshop vector icons software#

I shall be using this abstract background to demonstrate the right technique to open and use Vectors in Photoshop. For our purpose I’ve created a background in Illustrator and saved it as an EPS file as this is a widely distributed Vector format.

#Photoshop vector icons how to#

Let’s move on to learn how to open and use Vectors in Photoshop. The good news – Vector files can be resized and used in Photoshop and also retain its picture quality. If you’re disappointed in Photoshop for this reason, please don’t be.

Vectors cannot be completely edited or created using Photoshop.

#Photoshop vector icons software#

You may visit our earlier post to learn more about the difference between Raster and Vector formats.Ĭoming back to our earlier point, Photoshop is a bitmap or raster editing software and is well suited for image editing purposes. Vector on the other hand are created using dots, curves, lines and polygons and are completely scalable or resizable without any loss of quality. This means that these Raster images cannot be scaled without losing their picture quality. Raster images are pixel-based and are resolution dependant. There are mainly two formats in computer graphics, namely raster and vector. So let’s discuss image formats to have a better understanding of the subject. This leads us to another question regarding image formats. It is also widely used to create digital artwork, but the output is always in a Raster format. It focuses on using Photoshop to do most of the work.Photoshop is a Bitmap editing application that is ideally used to edit the photograph and to manipulate images. Here is an excellent style guide that Microsoft has on how to design icons for Vista and XP. When I go to export, I run a script that iterates over the top level groups/folders, hiding all but one at a time, and exporting the results to bitmaps for all the major resolutions 16x16, 24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 128x128 and 256x256. I use 'groups' (in Illustrator) or 'folders' (Fireworks or Photoshop) to isolate each icon from one another, but lets me keep all the individual layers that make up the icon unflattened. The way I tend to build my icon packs is by designing all icons inside a single document. Photoshop, however, has Actions as well a simplified macro system that lets you record and playback simple batch activities. Illustrator has added a 'pixel preview' mode to achieve this as well.Īll three packages have scripting capabilities that allow you to automate repetative tasks such as multi-export, naming, etc. The benefit of designing in a bitmap package using vectors is its much easier to preview the rasterized result by zooming in on the document so you can see the individual pixels. I find Fireworks has an easier time dealing with vectors because they're 'first class' objects, while in Photoshop they're actually a combination of a vector mask and a colour fill. Admittedly, Fireworks and Photoshop are bitmap graphics packages that have vector support. The ones I use are Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop. There are different approaches since there are several different commercial vector graphics packages out there. What sort of tools and workflow would suit this situation? I don't want to go into a program and individually do 'Save as.' on 100+ files to generate my icons. Some way I can programmatically (eg as a build task) take a set of vector graphics and generate a set of images and preferably have some control (eg from the command line) over things like naming conventions, output format, size, etc.'Snap to Grid' and similar features would cover this case but not others and For example, say I had a grid, I wouldn't necessarily want to draw that by hand. A programmatic way of creating vector graphics.

Some tools to create (preferably graphically) some vector graphics in some acceptable format.I've never played around with vector graphics before though so what I'm after is: This got me thinking: perhaps I should generate them as vector graphics (eg SVG) and then generate a set of image files to use on my site. I haven't yet locked in sizes so I didn't want to generate image files (PNG, GIF, JPG) directly in case I change my mind after I get further along with layout and UI to see what works and what doesn't. For a Website I'm developing, I will need to create some graphics.