How to make good looking text on a small canvas

[AustinZenn]

So I make emotes for live streamers on Twitch, and I can't seem to make text come out clear. I'm trying to make it look good in a 28 pixels x 28 pixels canvas. I'm trying to get the text to come out as clear as this. How do I do this?

[Chuck Uebele]

28x28px is way too small for text to be legible. That size is really just for very simple icons the convey process or idea.

[AustinZenn]

OK, but the image I posted has good looking text so

[Chuck Uebele]

Your example has very bold text and is not that long. Frankly, on my computer, I had to enlarge it to read it. Can you post one that you're trying to make look good?

[JJMack]

AustinZenn  wrote

OK, but the image I posted has good looking text so

At what resolution is it good looking? If I had a 72dpi display  it would display as you see in your image document's image size dialog  0.389" x 0.389" but my displays do not have a 72dpi resolution they have different dpi resolution.

My 20" 1600x1200 display has a 100DPI resolution the image displays 0.28" x 0.28".

My 24" 4k  display has a 185DPI resolution the image displays 0.151" x 0.151".

My 12" Surface Pro 3 display has a 216DPI resolution the image displays 0.13" x 0.13".

My 8.4" Galaxy display has a 359DPI resolution the image displays 0.078" x 0.078".

My eyes do not find your text fine on all my displays.

To keep the text the same size 0.389" x 0.389" on all my displays you wor need different size canvases

Text of course would be a Text Layer Vector graphics so it would resize well not via interpolating a pixel layer.