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Participant
April 28, 2018
Question

Issue with sawtooth/pixelated/jagged/lumpy stroke?

  • April 28, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 6038 views

I've never had this issue until recently and there are literally no solutions to this, so this is my last hope on finding a fix to this incredibly obnoxious issue. First, I am using Photoshop CS4 Extended. I am also using Windows 10 and I've already checked to see if everything is up to date, and as far as I can tell it is. No matter what tool I use the stroke on, all of them do NOT look smooth AT ALL. Any tool. I've reset photoshop, I've reset the tools, I've uninstalled and reinstalled then found the cleaning tool download and uninstalled ran that and reinstalled again. Still doesn't work. Yes, the anti-aliasing is checked & yes I've checked the spacing of the brush and set to 1% and hardness to 100%. I've checked it all and STILL this issue is unresolved. It happened recently so it has to be something with ps or my computer, but it used to be a smooth stroke with no issues. Here are some examples to show you guys what I'm working with:

I also was on this forum and the admin really tried to help me but nothing seems to be fixing it: Having trouble with my brush stroke being jagged looking? | Photoshop Gurus Forum

* the images I have attached show just using the brush tool to make a circle and use a stroke, however this happens with ANY tool I use. So saying don't use brush tool use isn't going to solve it, the stroke is messed up on all of them unfortunately.

Message was edited by: Ashley

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3 replies

Participant
April 28, 2018

I've also noticed that when I used edit stroke it was set to centered not outside and it didn't look as good when I set it to centered. I tried setting my layer style and layer stroke to centered and both were jagged but looked slightly better when the position was set to inside. though, then the inside had a bit of pixelation. I just want all the strokes to look nice again set to outside position.

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 18, 2018

ashleys53893999 

Well here's irony.  I've suddenly started having the same issue.  Did you find a fix?

Broken Stroke Layer Style (no AA)

Participant
April 28, 2018

First off, thank you so much for responding! I really appreciate it. I saved it as a high quality jpg and provided what happened in the first two image attachments. It still shows the same as in photoshop.

this is what my cache levels look like? I'm still kind of new to the more technical issues so I'm not sure if this looks correct at all or not?

Which leads me to stroking from the edit menu THIS ACTUALLY WORKS FINE! The edit menu stroke is not pixelated. So while that works and looks fine, I still would like to know why the regular stroke no longer works when it used to just fine? It doesn't matter if I double click the layer and stroke or if I go to layer style and stroke...Those two do not work for ANY TOOL not just the brush tool to answer your question as well. All tools to make a circle with are suddenly having the jagged looking stroke issue. So why is only the edit menu stroke working but not the others? Here is a picture of the edit menu stroke looking smooth and perfect and not upsetting lol :

and then to answer you question again the mode for the layer style and double click on the layer and stroke are both set to normal for the blending mode and still have the jagged looking stroke:

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 28, 2018

Save the stroked image as a high quality JPG, and view it in another application, like Windows Photo Viewer.   This will address GPU issues making the stroke _look_ jagged when it might not be.

Check Cache levels in Preferences > Performance.  It  needs to be set  to a value higher than 1.   (This is related to my first sentence.)

You are stroking from the Edit menu?  I doubt this would  have survived a reinstall including  using the Cleaning tool, but check the blend mode in the Stroke dialog.  I was thinking 'Dissolve', but actually, the result would be way worse than you are describing (as below).

This only  happens when you use Stroke, or  when you use the brush tool  directly?

OK I have looked  through your screen shots again, and I see you are stroking with a Layer Style.  Not much to go wrong there, but make sure that the blend mode is set to normal.  Blend modes work differently with strokes in Layer styles, so I don't think this is the issue.

Right now I think we need to eliminate GPU issues and cache levels, and  take it from there.