Magnifying Glass and Xara 5 Logo

The history of this is that I was doodling in an attempt to create a Logo for the recent competition and I had typed "Xara" using the Abbey Medium font.
This I altered with the Mold Tool, then cloned and gave each a different shade of cyan. I then created a 999 step blend of the two "Xara"s. I noticed that this method created "jaggies". I never progressed with the logo competition because of the jaggies, but my intention was to post an enlarged section of the logo as seen through a magnifying glass to show these jaggies, and to ask what, if anything could be done to eradicate them.
By creating a bitmap copy of a circular selection and using the fisheye perspective deformation filter in Xara's Live Effects, the jaggies had pretty much disappeared! If you look closely you may be able to discern the jaggies in the area outside the magnifying glass. I had wanted to create the Xara text with blends and not the extrude tool. However the magnifying glass was made with the extrude tool, except for the "glass" - just a couple of highlights. I liked the end result anyway, and probably would have submitted it to Gary for the contest, but I had run out of time.
If anyone knows how to create the blend for the text minus the jaggies I'd like to know.
Saludos,
Bob.

A dollar short and a day late (actually 3 days late) Bob. :(

Nice effect.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

A dollar short and a day late...

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Isn't that a quote from a song?
Thanks Gary.
Saludos,
Bob.
Edit: To answer my own question it's a book by Terry McMillan.

I have not testesd this but do you have the view quality slider set at maximum or is it at the default (1 step down). You could always do more steps in the blend which would take out some jaggies.

Once you get the blend looking right group it and the redraw time will be much less.

Hi Bob, this may sound strange but try reducing the blend steps from 999 to 99 or a little as you can get away with. It appears to me that this is a case of more is less.

This was done using a 99 step blend and it had far less jaggies than a 999 step blend. Go figure?

Top (or left) is a 256 colour gif and bottom (or right) is a full colour png.

Here's the same file but using a 999 step blend. Notice the terrible jaggies you encountered. I don't know why this should be so, but it seems true ???

Further proof.

About the jaggies - the Blend tool has an button on the Infobar that turns anti-aliasing on and off for blends. It has two "T"s on it. You might have that button deselected.

Nice logo, BTW!

Good point PixelDust but with the AA selected it tends to remove jaggies but the problem still exists that the greater the number of steps the greater the jaggies regardless of this button. (Mines got two "A"s though) ;)

Thanks for looking at the jaggy problem, Egg. Also I've found that toggling anti-alias doesn't change the effect. The view quality is at the highest setting, too. I changed the font in the attached example, as Abbey Medium isn't that smooth at higher zooms. Arial shows the same jaggies at any number of steps, they just crop up in different parts of the blend (except for the example on the right). :D
Saludos,
Bob.

When creating such blends I find that using a [blend along a curve], is a better method as it allows you far greater control as you can [edit the distance between steps] giving you smoother lines. (The 'curve' can also be a straight line).

I usually create these with [bevels] so that it finishes up with 3D lighting. The blend step spacing is even more important with this method as it needs to correspond with the bevel size and shape.

Hi Anas, I solved the jaggies problem in the simplest way possible, by applying a 1 pixel feathering. If it is of any interest in this particular forum, the jaggies are present when making this blend using CorelDRAW too.
Saludos,
Bob.

With all my respect, but I can't to accept this as the logo (do you know about limit for a points? - your 999 steps should produce about at least 10 000 nodes... - it wouldn't ever could print) But the main reason - a good logo should be simple and looks good in b/w...