Sharper borders for fonts?

[Scar7752]

I've been messing around with Photoshop for a while now and cant seem to get this right

What I'm basically wanting to do is make borders for numbers, but they always have curved edges, even when they're set to inside.

Is there a way to do this or will I have to do it by hand?

 

[Alan Harkleroad]

well you can make a duplicate of the layer and transform and scale the second layer as the inner number, or you can pen tool the outline, thought depending on how thick you want the line inside will normally do if you started with a crisp number to begin with.

 

[Sage]

The rounded corners are an inherent problem with Photoshop. Even my CS4 does it. The only program I've ever found that puts square corners on anything it outlines is the one I use for cutting vinyl. I don't really know if that's because it's a vector platform or not. Illustrator may or may not be the same as PS since it's primarily a vector program but I don't use it for outlining so I couldn't honestly say for certain.

I usually do sort of what Alan suggested...

Create a new layer under the one I want to outline.
Make a 'Selection' of what I want to outline (Ctrl+click the layer's window).
Determine how large I wish to expand it for the 'outline' and hit Select > Modify > Expand and enter a pixel amount.
Fill my selection with my 'outline' color (Shift+F5).
To clean up the corners I just zoom in and use the Polygonal Lasso Tool (or whatever tool I think will do the task at hand the best) and create new selections to fill.

You can either merge the two layers, duplicate the two layers and merge them (thus persevering the original layers) or link the two layers and re-size as needed.

 

[Jeff24fan]

In Gimp, I just simply free hand outline the part I want sharp.