Re: 256x256 px icons

[Warren Young <warren at etr-usa dot com>]

On 8/8/2011 2:43 PM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>  If you have a way to create a C which
> is not handdrawn *and* stands out, I would very much like to see it.

That's why I quoted Andy: increasing the stroke width can help.  By 
starting with a much thicker outer stroke, you end up with a brighter 
yet still AA'd outline.

You can also play with (x, y) placement and the sampling algorithm.

An 8 px white stroke on black scaled 256:32 (8x) will not necessarily 
end up a single 1 px white stroke on black.  Given a case where that 
happens, then shifting the line 4 px from that position, downsampling 
can give you two 50% gray lines side by side if the algorithm interprets 
the source image as having half the line on one side of the pixel 
boundary and half on the other.  Then if you leave the line where it is, 
4 px "off" optimal for one algorithm but use a different sampling 
algorithm, you might get good results again.

This same issue is also why on-screen type hinting is difficult.