Jagged Lines using pentool- How to fix

[KeeleyMazurek]

Here is a picture of the art I had finished, when i had it professionally printed the lines looked jagged and when i went back and checked the image it had that weird looking texture. the image is a 1:1 ratio 300PPI and all my other line images ive printed have not turned out like this from the printer so im not sure whats happening but please help!the thin lines on the singed part of the thong came out the worst in the print

[Derek Cross]

For something like this try a resolution of around 1200PPI.

[KeeleyMazurek]

That did not work, any other suggestions?

[davescm · Accepted solution]

Can you clarify exactly which tool you used. The pen tool draws paths - not lines , although those paths can be stroked with a brush.

It looks like the pencil tool has been used, which does not apply anti-aliasing to smooth the lines, hence you get jagged diagonals. You would be better using a small hard brush.

Dave

[KeeleyMazurek]

I used the curvature pen tool, set to shape. I have used this on numerous other works, and have had them printed and the lines were smooth. this is the only image that was on all the same settings but turned out like this. I will probably have to just redo it? i dont know if i had some other setting somewhere on something thats caused this perhaps? 

if highlight all layers and reset tool will that do anything do you think?

thanks for the help

[davescm]

Hi

Using the curvature pen tool does use anti-aliasing on it's stroke so for very fine lines, the best you can do is make sure that you are using sufficiently high ppi - as suggested by Derek. If you need to scale your image - don't flatten it first - or you will lose the advantage of vector shapes.

Dave

[KeeleyMazurek]

Ive never hear of anti-aliasing. So this is a function of the tool that cant be changed i assume? I should have the PPI set before i begin drawing?

And what do you mean by flatten the image? I am new to photoshop so im not sure what that entails. 

Thanks for all your help!

[davescm]

Anti aliasing is a way of adding semi-transparent pixels around the edge of a line to make it look smooth when it is on a diagonal. Without it it would be a sharp staircase as the diagonal left one column of pixels and entered the next. However it needs some pixels around the line to work - so if you are making very fine lines you need a very high pixel count (which when printing means high ppi)

Flattening an image combines all the image layers into just one.