Mastering Photoshop: Pixel Perfection
When Rotating, Pasting and Nudging
Marc Edwards
When creating Web and app interfaces, most designers slave over every
single pixel, making sure it’s got exactly the right color, texture and position.
If you’re not careful, though, some common functions like moving, rotating
and pasting can undo your hard work, resulting in a blurry mess. But with
some small changes to your workflow, you should be able to maintain the
highest-quality artwork from the start to the end of the project.
Pixel perfect rotation
If you’re not careful, rotating layers in Photoshop can damage them in
a very noticeable, pixel-mashing way.
When rotating layers with Free Transform (and some other tools) to exactly
90 or 270°, the quality of the outcome is determined by the layer’s size. If
the layer is of an even width and even height, then you’ll be fine. If it’s of an
odd width and odd height, you’ll also be okay. But if they’re of an odd
width by even height or even width by odd height, then you’ll see
something like the result below: