I was just musing over the thought of whether XaraX could be made to perform "selective anti-aliasing". YOU choose what objects get 'smoothed' and to what degree.
Photoshop allows you to remove all 'smoothing' if you want for any text created. This is VERY useful for text 10pt or smaller. It makes it much more legible for Web images, for instance.
And perhaps XaraX could take a tip from the "Extensis Photographics" plugin? It has 4 levels of 'smoothing' for text - 1 being None / 4 being fully anti-aliased.
Mark Goodall?... if you manage to read this, could you comment maybe on whether this type of function/ability could be implemented into a future version of the program?
Does anyone else think this would be a useful function for XaraX to have?
IMHO Xara has one of the best anti-alaising engines in the world and produces crisp looking text even at tiny sizes.
If you turn the anti-aliasing off you get jagged-looking text.
The only time I turn anti-aliasing off is when I am exporting a bitmap (the image I am exporting is a bitmap--I am not creating a bitmap) containing solid areas of color or text, because Xara will anti-alias this and the colors get mooshy (technical term) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Anti-aliased text is a process whereby intermediate colored pixels are added to smoothe the charaters creating what appears to be crisper characters.
In the example below, I exported the crisp text with anti-aliasing on (Window > Quality > Anti-aliasing), imported this image back into Xara, and exported both with the quality setting at Normal (Window > Quality > Normal).
Yes, you are right, not anti-aliased text looks auful in XaraX. On the other hand, in the browser, (or in any text editor window) the text with the same font and size looks much sharper then anti-aliased text in XaraX. I'd like to have similar mode for XaraX text.
I wrote once about it in this forum and will repeat once more about advantages of this:
1. Create small and sharp text
2. Enable imitation of browser window in XaraX, not only graphics but text too. Very useful feature for creating whole web page mockups.
3. Next step for using this mode could be exporting CSS.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> Yes, you are right, not anti-aliased text looks auful in XaraX. On the other hand, in the browser, (or in any text editor window) the text with the same font and size looks much sharper then anti-aliased text in XaraX. I'd like to have similar mode for XaraX text.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The text in your Browser is anti-aliased too. Windows anti-aliases text to make it appear cleaner. Other wise you get very pixelated (jagged) text.
The example below is very crude but will illustrate my point. The each blue grid square represents 1 pixel on your computer monitor.
If the text can only be represented in black or white (non anti-aliased) then a decision has to be made when part of a character overlaps a grid square. Is it black, or is it white? The result is the stair-stepped example shown in the middle.
By anti-aliasing (adding gray pixels around the black pixels), we can smooth the appearance of the text. (Example on the right side). When the text is very small, these gray squares are not visible to the eye, but they are there.
I never understood why so many people believe the accepted wisdom of "small text works better when not anti-aliased". According to what my eyes tell me (maybe I have unusual eyes, I don't know), anti-aliasing increases legibility at all sizes.</p>
The only reason the standard TrueType fonts are readable non-anti-aliased at low sizes is that some poor sod has had to spend hours going through adjusting the common small size bitmaps by hand. This usually loses much of the character of the typeface, making small fonts all look the same. And it means there's no smooth transition between sizes: the font will suddenly get much bolder as the design has to jump from one to two pixels for vertical strokes.</p>
I wish I could persuade Windows to anti-alias everything. Small fonts, with so few pixels to display themselves, are exactly the place you need the extra detail anti-aliasing gives, and it's perverse that this is precisely where Windows gives up.</p>
Hi guys, thanks for getting into this tired ol' subject again with me. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Gary...
My point was not to dismiss Xara's great abilities to create smooth graphics and text, but rather, to present an idea that could serve as an alternative to some folks, if they should so desire it.
"Xara has one of the best anti-alaising engines in the world" - no arguement there!
"If you turn the anti-aliasing off you get jagged-looking text" - and therein lies my delema. Even a 'multi-level' application of anti-aliasing would be suitable; ala the Extensis Photographics plugin for PS. (which is vector based by-the-way)
Under certain specific circumstances, each of us using the programs we all use will have their own needs to be met. I myself, have need of "legible" text at fairly small sizes. Others using the same program may not have this need.
And i understand completely about the 'non mooshy' & 'mooshy' subject. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
My specific concerns lie in the fact that even Xara can't create completely legible text at smaller sizes than normal. Note the word "specific" there.
If i had to create a Web button or other such image for a site, which i often do, this "forced" anti-aliasing function can sometimes get in the way. Take a look at the following sample image. I personally, although it is not esthetically pleasing to look at Andrew [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img], would prefer the bottom version of the 3. Because it does serve a purpose; for me.
Also Gary, i was thinking about this type of "selective" anti-aliasing being perhaps useful for those still wishing to manually slice images for Web purposes. I realize XaraX has got this covered fairly well now, but options can sometimes ba a good thing too! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
In fact, it was a thread about that very topic (by Klaus i think) that lead me to give more thought to this idea in the first place; that, and the fact that i've been wanting it in Xara for quite some time.
Anywho, thanks for dropping by guys!
PS: unfortunately, some fonts were harmed in the making of this image. For that, we apologize. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]
Mark...
[This message was edited by theKeeper on January 23, 2001 at 06:33 AM.]
Just an observation, but if anti-aliasing is the be all and end all, how come the user interface to your operating system is not anti-aliased?
Following this train of thought, if designing an interface for a web page, and you wish to make it feel familar would you not want to leave anti-aliasing off in some cases?
and see if you get satisfactory results. The attached image has each of the text elements cloned twice (Ctrl+K x 2) on top of the original text. The point size text has not been cloned to show the difference.
This is a great debate. It tends to go on forever. I consider that the whole problem lies with screen resolution. PC screens usually have a resolution of 96 dpi. When you get into the realms of small fonts for web graphics you'r talking 10 to 8 points minimum size. At this level of font size and screen resolution you must be within the realms of a stroke of text (ie the upright in an "h") taking up one pixel width.
The letter "e" therefore would take up 5 pixels in the vertical plane, 3 horizontal strokes and 2 spaces. (Is this making sense ?) This by definition then must be approaching the smallest visible text size available under the current screen resolution. (ie how could you fix 3 strokes and 2 spaces within a 4 pixel grid?)
Now with a bit of supposition, I dont suppose 8 point text fits exactly into an exact pixel grid matrix, and this is were anti-aliasing fills the gaps with grey pixels. However there must come a time were font size gets so low that anti-aliasing runs out of pixel availability and instead of a {black stroke, grey stroke, white stroke, grey stroke, black stroke} to render the text, this falls to a {black stroke, grey stroke, black stroke} rendering. This leads to a blurring. God, this is getting complicated!
I'm presently typing this text (Arial 8pt @ 100% in XaraX ) and can see the effects of this even with Xara's great anti-aliasing. If I wanted to export the text as a gif, with its limited 256 colour option and also had far more colours in greater use, the lesser grey anti-aliasing would need to be sacrificed.
I honestly think that if you require tiny text in a web page you need a single pixel width font, with single pixel spaces. I don't know if one is available.
One further point and I may be missing something, is that I don't understand haw Keeper can compare Photoshop and Xara's rendering unless you are using the same font size
I have attached a screen grab of a normal text (Times New Roman) with a single pixel font of my making. Notice the difference between the 2 screen grabs, 1: with anti-aliasing on 2: with it set to normal. The sngle pixel font is the only element to retain the same definition.
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