Optimizing Strokes Part2

When creating icons or arbitrary artwork in Photoshop it’s definitely adviseable to make use of Photoshop’s layer style functionality. Not just because of the fact that you can easily create multiple differently colored instances of the shape - but also because you can easily apply smooth strokes to your elements. The most obvious method is to use the “Stroke” effect to achieve… well strokes. In most cases that’s the way to go. However if you wanna apply a subtle stroke to a round object you get much smoother results when using a tight outer glow instead. See for yourself. Subtle but noticeable

By the way you may use the following settings as a starting point - I normally create an outer glow with 1px in size and a range of 30 to 40%. However feel free to play around with different settings to suite your graphic.

See the complete tutorial at http://www.bartelme.at/journal/archive/optimizing_strokes_part2