Why the difference

[sgiff]

Why is it when you export an image in Xara it does not look the same as what you see on screen. Look at the following sample I have included. The screen image has sharpness in it at 100% zoom but when exporting the image changes and is less sharp. I've noticed this also when exporting stuff with small text, when it gets converted to an image it tends to not look as good as what Xara's on-screen antialiasing does. The only way I've found around this is to create a screen capture of what's showing on the Xara desktop and paste it into Photoshop. Clicking the options for Antialiasing (Maintain screen...) etc. does not seem to make any difference.

s.g.

http://web2.airmail.net/sgiff/images/sample.gif

[sgiff]

Why is it when you export an image in Xara it does not look the same as what you see on screen. Look at the following sample I have included. The screen image has sharpness in it at 100% zoom but when exporting the image changes and is less sharp. I've noticed this also when exporting stuff with small text, when it gets converted to an image it tends to not look as good as what Xara's on-screen antialiasing does. The only way I've found around this is to create a screen capture of what's showing on the Xara desktop and paste it into Photoshop. Clicking the options for Antialiasing (Maintain screen...) etc. does not seem to make any difference.

s.g.

http://web2.airmail.net/sgiff/images/sample.gif

[npopov]

The reason is that XaraX uses more sophisticated algorithm for exporting bitmaps and a faster process for screen display.
For sharpening images I use Utilities-BitmapEffects&Plugins-Bitmap Effects - Special effects - Shapen [Medium or Low]
Need to create bitmap copy first, of course.

[sgiff]

What you say makes sense but it sucks for doing web work when the ouput of a button with small text on it looks worse than the antialiasing you get on screen. They should include the same algorithm for viewing graphics on screen as an export option.

s.g.

[Wolfgang]

You might want to check this thread, it could be the reason for your problem.

Always try to position on "pixel boundaries" as Mark calls it and always try to make your graphic's with and height integers. Just check my example there.

I just tried with a quick draw and it comes out perfectly sharp. The two "Anti Aliasing" options do actually produce slightly different results too.

Wolfgang

[Mark Goodall]

It should be possible to achieve the same image in the exported bitmap as viewed on screen. The export image is usually much better if you are viewing in 256 colour modes becuase of palette optimisation.
If your image includes bitmaps which are being scaled down then there can be a difference as the exported dialogue uses a very high quality bitmap scaling algorithm. If you don't want this then set the utilities->options->view-> never smooth bitmaps option to off, this will also stop the on-screen system from using its faster and less good smoothing algorithm.

[Klaus Nordby]

Mark, as I've written to you before, the "utilities->options->view-> never smooth bitmaps option" is such an important function that it needs to be a button/function easily accessed from the UI - and not obscenely obscurely buried deep down in "utilities->options->view".


K