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Snapping pixels in Illustrator CS5, all problems fixed
Apr 10
Yesterday I was working on a new article when suddenly my friend Zemechiel asked for my help, he was working on an new custom icon on Illustrator and there was a problem with a couple of anchor points, he simply wanted to displace them 0.5 pixels to the right but the program was being stubborn and only allowed him to move in integers. I checked all the options (Snap To Pixels, Snap To Grid, Show Grid) and everything was apparently OK, this required all my focus in order to beat this impasse.
Removing all snap to pixels options
This quick tutorial is not meant to show how to make pixel art but on the opposite, how to remove all the ‘snap to pixels’ options so you can have complete freedom while working in your designs. Let’s make a random file where we can evaluate all the different snapping options.
Opening a new file
The first two options regarding ‘snap to pixels’ will appear as soon as you create a new file. First we have the ‘preview mode’: This option defines whether you’ll see a ‘hard pixel’ canvas or an overprint version, because we’re looking to clear all pixel-related options my suggestion is to leave the ‘overprint’ option checked, though this doesn’t affect at all in the practice.
As for the second option, this one is actually relevant to fulfill our purpose, it is called ‘Align New Objects to Pixel Grid’ and you MUST leave it unchecked.
OK guys, so far we’re doing things well, now let’s take a look at the main options that almost every designer knows regarding snapping in Illustrator. First let’s make something like this at a zoom value of 6400 %:
Pixel preview
Overprint preview
This object will serve us as a model to understand how the different snapping properties affect an element in Illustrator.
Snapping options
Now I’m going to show you how the two snapping options can affect an element, let’s take a look at the following screenshot so you can find the location of these options.
Snap to Grid
Let’s experiment with the first option named Snap to Grid, this option aligns every object you trace to Illustrator’s grid (do not confuse it with ‘align to pixels’) activate it and then using the ‘direct selection’ tool, grab the two anchor points of the left side of our object.
Now hit the ‘right’ key of your keyboard to displace the anchor points, you will see that by default the anchor points will be aligned to the grid.
So this could be one of the reasons why my friend was having trouble, he was using the keyboard. What you need to do is go to Object > Transform > Move (shortcut Shift + Ctrl + M) and from the menu that will popup you can enter the amount of pixels you want to displace the anchor points.
And now you can displace the anchor points at shorter distances than 1 px, this will probably fix your query but if not then we can check the last alternative.
Snap to Point
What this option does is that every time you make a new vector object and you place it among 2 pixel boundaries of a grid line, it aligns to the nearest pixel of the grid. You can still move your objects in less than a pixel by accessing the ‘move’ option, but forget about moving it manually or through the keyboard.
And that’s it, thanks to my friend Zemechiel how asked me about this problem now you know how to remove all the snapping options from Illustrator, I hope this can be helpful for all of you and well, please leave us a comment if you have any doubts or just want to say hello 
.
P.S: If you want to go deeper into Illustrator, you can check our new series where we’ll be covering all the basics starting with Illustrator strokes.
Bonus
If you forgot to uncheck the ‘Align New Objects to Pixel Grid’ option at the beginning of this tutorial, you can always access to it by displaying the ‘Transform’ menu.
When you’re working on ‘pixel preview’, your objects will tend to look a little blurry. To correct this problem, go to Edit>Preferences>General and uncheck the ‘Anti-aliased Work’ option.
With Anti-aliasing
Great article man!!! This is what I was looking for!!!
Thanks
Thank you Alfred!, you’re the first one who has left a comment in our site and hopefully not the last
. We’ll be posting more Illustrator tips on the future, so stick with us …
I also had problem on positioning path on Photoshop. It’s very hard to keep it snap to pixel. You know any trick to fix this?
Indeed we know a couple of good tricks, we’re going to write a tutorial about it on the next days
, you can subscribe to our newsletter to receive it asap…
Nice one, thx for sharing
Hey no problem buddy, we’re just getting started
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Good blog post and decent site template design. I am more into web design. Nonetheless, would check back again soon!
Thanks mate, we know that graphic and web design can play along often
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Thanks man!, we really appreciate your words…
Grazie amico!, Siamo contenti che ti sia piaciuto…
THANK YOU SO MUCH MATE… after about an hour trying to figure out and follow your steps I GOT IT.
Simply use the ( overprint canvas ) on the preview mode before starting your project. Make sure you’re working with a very very (very) large vector or FONT and have all your snapping to grid unchecked and you should be good to go. NO MORE SNAPPING TO GRID ISSUES.
ur the best mate.
Thanks AB!!!!, that’s a really nice complement to our post, though the guys from Adobe should make things easier so we don’t have to write this kind of tutorials…
This didn’t work for me unfortunately
Why?, What happened?…
Didn’t work for me either.
I haven’t had any problems in the past. Now I have noticed that when I try moving something like an object or anchor using the arrow keys, it jumps way more than 1 pixel. I’ve tried snapping and unsnapping to grid and point. I have made appropriate adjustments in preferences to no avail.
Any other ideas how one might go about fixing this problem?
Hi Shaun, if you want to move an element less than one pixel you’ll have to do it using your mouse because the keyboard will always move your anchor points 1 pixel as minimum…
Do you have CS5? Don’t overlook CMD/Ctrl-K (Preferences): I am able to set my “keyboard increment” to .25 points, meaning I can nudge my object in quarter-point increments/.. hit the arrow key 4 times to move a single point. (i think 1 pt is the default, when I’ve got precision to accomplish, I hit Ctrl-K and change it to .25 pt)
Hope that helps
WOW. Hours of frustration solved by simply unchecking “snap to grid”. Thank you so much!
Haha it happens!, please let us know if you need help with something else so we can work on it!!!…
Useful tutorial. Avast didn’t want me to read it, finds something nefarious on your page apparently. Maybe you can find out what that is and rid yourselves of it, lest you lose some less brave readers.
Thank you Tim!, we haven’t been able to find the problem, it’s seems to be a plugin though, I’m glad you liked the tutorial…
Thank you very much. I was going crazy about that.
i fucking love you. it was the ‘Align New Objects to Pixel Grid’ that was messing everything up. never even noticed that option before. THANK YOU!
Haha that’s awesome, I also cursed a lot before finding out the root of the problem!…
Hey man, great article.
Do you know why the “Align to Pixel Grid” check box in the Transform contextual panel keeps getting checked (even after unchecking it)and in a document without this option checked when created?
I’ve tried a lot of the processes in this tutorial, but every time I select a new object the check box gets checked.
Hi Carlos, it seems that this is a typical Illustrator glitch, we haven’t had that problem here so I’m not sure how to fix this issue, maybe if you go to the “View” menu you can uncheck the “Snap to Grid” option, that should allow you to fix this problem.
DUDE!! I thought I was going crazy! Thx SO much!
Haha that’s awesome, glad we helped you!!!…