: How can I achieve a sharp pixel perfect stroke effect in Photoshop? I'm working on retro-style pixel art for a video game. I would like to be able to add a border around a sprite, but I

@BetL875

Lasse's answer is good. Depending on your setup, though, a Posterize adjustment layer set to 2 might get you there in one step. It's definitely worth a try.

Layering your file, one color per layer, will definitely get you there using Posterize.

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@Carla748

A really easy way to achieve a sharp stroke is with a drop shadow layer style (yep, you read that correctly).



The top Goomba is your example. The bottom Goomba is the same bitmap, but masked with the stroke added as a drop shadow layer style. The trick to getting it right is the custom contour curve.



The same can be done with the outer glow layer style. And, now you can apply this to any layer easily.

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@Murray664

To do this you can follow this procedure:


Turn your layer into a smart object, this way you can make multiple copies of the layer that will automagically stay in sync with regards to contents
Make four copies of this smart object (not using the "New Smart Object via Copy" function, this will make separate smart objects, we want them to be instanced here)
Adjust the position of each of the four copies, by nudging them each one pixel in the four directions (ie. one up, one down, one left, and one right)
Group the four copies into a group in the layer palette
Add a blue (the stroke color) solid color layer, position it above the group
Alt-click the separator line between the group and the blue layer to turn the group into a clipping mask for the blue layer


Result:



You can download the Photoshop CS6 file here.

This technique can easily be adapted to also include pixels in all 8 directions by just repeating the above steps a second time (another 4 layers) and nudging them one pixel diagonally in the four diagonal directions.

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