adobe photoshop - Drawing thin shapes without losing quality or being blurry

I want to draw an "x" and the size needs to be 8 × 8 and 10 × 10 but I can't do it without losing quality and it being blurry.

I tried in Photoshop and Illustrator, I tried to draw it big and then resize and I tried to draw it in 8 × 8 but no matter what I do when it is 8 × 8 or 10 × 10 it gets blurry and thick. I tried using a rectangle, line or even with a letter.

How can I draw a small thin "x" like the Microsoft Edge close button?

Answer

The "blur" is just anti-aliasing, which is generally exactly what you want, otherwise everything looks jagged and pixelated.

You actually can't turn anti-aliasing off for shape layers in Photoshop, so (if that is what you're doing) you'll either have to use the shape tools in "fill pixels" mode on and uncheck "Anti-alias" or just draw the shapes yourself...

The following is an "X" drawn as a shape layer (on the left) vs one drawn pixel by pixel with a 1px wide pencil (on the right)...

If you're using text to create your "X" then you can set the anti-aliasing mode to "None" (bottom right of the Character panel)...

But as you can see, getting the pixels to fall in the right place can be a challenge...

8 × 8 pixels and 10 × 10 pixels are small enough sizes that drawing the shapes yourself — pixel by pixel — makes the most sense.