How to make smooth edges when deleting background

[Fourdogslong]

Hi,

I have a bit of a specific question, I have a bunch of icons in small png format that I would like to modify.

There are only a few pixels large. Most of these icons have a an icon and a colored background, I want to make that background transparent. With the flood erage tool I can do that easily but the edges of the icon stay colored and it makes the transition look unnatural.

Is there a way to make the transition "fade out" like in the original icon while removing the background?

Here are two screeshots to see the original png (with the dark green background) and the one with the background removed and problematic edges.

[loukash]

Rather than attempting to "push pixels", I would simply rebuild the pictogram using a vector rectangle and a few strokes. It takes just a few minutes:

Just make sure you're aligning everything to integer pixels.
Except for the 3 px wide strokes which must be aligned to x.5 coordinates so that the stroke doesn't antialias.
You can also further manipulate the antialiasing value via Blend Options → Coverage Map

[Pšenda]

If the object was on a pure white background, I would use Erase White Paper.

[Fourdogslong]

51 minutes ago, loukash said:

Rather than attempting to "push pixels", I would simply rebuild the pictogram using a vector rectangle and a few strokes. It takes just a few minutes:

Just make sure you're aligning everything to integer pixels.
Except for the 3 px wide strokes which must be aligned to x.5 coordinates so that the stroke doesn't antialias.
You can also further manipulate the antialiasing value via Blend Options → Coverage Map

Thanks, in this case it doesn't look to hard to rebuild as you did but I have quite a few icons like that I'd like to modify and my skills are simply too limited to rebuild some of them so I was hoping for an easier solution, that's if there is one.

[Fourdogslong]

12 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

If the object was on a pure white background, I would use Erase White Paper.

WOuld there be any way for this to work with the green background?

[loukash]

2 hours ago, Fourdogslong said:

my skills are simply too limited to rebuild some of them

Learning by doing is the key to success.  
And whenever you're stuck, you can then always ask for some help in the forum.

[firstdefence]

Can we have a few icon files to play with to see if we can find a reasonable workflow for you, I'm guessing the icons are 16px, 32px or 64px?