When Pixels Snap: Antialiasing in Illustrator CS5

Over the years, designers using Illustrator to create web graphics have faced two main issues:

• Graphics and text often appear soft or fuzzy when exported, especially when compared to similar graphics or text exported from Photoshop
• Extra pixels are sometimes added when artwork is exported, resulting in images with incorrect pixel dimensions

Both of these issues are actually caused by antialiasing, which is a double-edged sword. Antialiasing is supposed to make your art look better on a digital screen, but sometimes the side effects work against you. There are ways to build your art carefully to try to avoid issues, but with Illustrator CS5, Adobe added a slew of features that can help your artwork look better after being antialiased. The question is, at what cost? In this article, we’ll get a better understanding of what antialiasing is and how you can learn to control your art’s destiny when using Illustrator CS5.