How do I resize a flat vector icon so that it preserves hard edges?

Question

I recently purchased Drew Wilson's Pictos icon library. It is a library of flat, monochromatic icons for use on the web and elsewhere. The only issue is: they're vectors. I know my way around Illustrator a little bit, but ultimately I want to import these icons into Photoshop CS4 and resize to various dimensions.

When I import an icon and resize it to, say, 20x20 pixels, I notice that there is a fair bit of aliasing around the edges of the icon. I'm sure there is some magic number where the edges of these icons will remain crisp, but I can't find any option or setting that will allow me to size these icons properly.

How can I snap these icons to the closest size that removes or minimizes the aliasing?

Answer 1

The aliasing / pixelating is because vectors export out of illustator @ whatever size they're copied @

Try opening the icons in illustrator... scaling them waaay up

And then just keep a copy of the huge ones in a separate layer

Copy that layer when you want to scale it down ..annnd that way you'll have a copy to work with..and u won't have to re Open the file every time u need to make an edit

And a good rule of thumb for pixelation is

You can always size down.. but sizing up will create pixelating in bitmaps

Answer 2

Chances are, you have your logo in .eps format. If you do, open your .eps file in Photoshop. A dialog box will pop up asking the size you want to import. Be sure to select RGB color if this will display on the web. Select the Anti-aliasing checkbox. When your file opens up, zoom in, and you'll notice that Photoshop has neatly anti-aliased all of your edges for you.