Basic Font and Set Up Question

[rhilker]

I've never been happy with the way Photoshop has handled fonts and recently I wiped my hard drive and re-installed everything. Now it seems worse. I think its the way I am managing the files. I generally do a new file as 72 pixels per inch (adobe default), RGB colour and 8 bit.
Take a look at the attached example to see what I mean. The font gets pretty choppy.

What should I do to correct this and get better results.

[rhilker]

I've never been happy with the way Photoshop has handled fonts and recently I wiped my hard drive and re-installed everything. Now it seems worse. I think its the way I am managing the files. I generally do a new file as 72 pixels per inch (adobe default), RGB colour and 8 bit.
Take a look at the attached example to see what I mean. The font gets pretty choppy.

What should I do to correct this and get better results.

[pi314]

Okay - first things first
Don't use Photoshop!
It's not known for its text, I'd recommend Illustrator or Pagemaker instead.
Illustrator is a vector-based program, as is Corel Draw, or Freehand (Macromedia makes this I think?). Vector-based gives you "clearer" results.
Pagemaker is a "text only" program. It may or may not fix your problem.
Second problem
You're saving this file as a jpeg, hence noone can "fix" it "as-is", I'd recommend two-color gif - nice and small, and not quite as "lossy" (jpeg looses some quality). Oh, and I can't tell how it looks on your computer before you make it a jpeg, so I can't say you defenetly have a problem, so my question would be - does it look that horrible on your monitor BEFORE jpeg'ing it? My guess is it looks maybe a little better.
Third problem - and this is a guess...
The specific font your using?

To be honest - there's too many things you got goin on to say if the third is true or not.

[rhilker]

The example is blown up to illustrate. "Not" using photoshop is not what I was addressing. If I increase the number of pixels per inch will that smooth the graphic or can I do something else to the layer to smooth it. (vector mask?)

[Sark]

Photoshop is not the problem, as it uses the same text as any other app. These are vector based on their own layer, unless you flatten them.

When flattened, the text is converted to pixels and can appear pixelated if not antialiased enough.

DPI has no effect on a displayed image, only on the printed image, and yes, if your output is for print a higher DPI will help.

A better option, if output is printed rather than for display, is to leave the text on its own layer (no flattening/merging), this should produce perfect results at any resolution due to its vector nature.

Sark

[rhilker]

Generally I'm doing displayed graphics for the web, hense a converion to jpeg or gif. I do the text on its own layer with a transparent background.

I think I figured out part of the problem, PS was defaulted to "none" on font quality, by adjusting it to smooth it seems to have helped. I knew it was something stupid, like I feel.