Text & Anti Aliasing

[Mole]

I know this has been asked before but I just can't find the answer.

Using Xara Xtreme at the present time to make a business card with text and everything looks fine on the Screen. Clean, Crisp Fonts.

But when I save to a JPG or other type of a file to take it to the printer it's all gray hazy edges.


How do I maintain the clean crisp edges. I presume it has to do with the Anti Aliasing, I've tried just about everything but I'm getting frustrated.

Thanks

[steve.ledger]

I know this has been asked before but I just can't find the answer.

Using Xara Xtreme at the present time to make a business card with text and everything looks fine on the Screen. Clean, Crisp Fonts.

But when I save to a JPG or other type of a file to take it to the printer it's all gray hazy edges.


How do I maintain the clean crisp edges. I presume it has to do with the Anti Aliasing, I've tried just about everything but I'm getting frustrated.

Thanks

I'd save as PNG.

You can make sure you set JPG compression to zero, may improve a little. Though JPG is lossy and will always introduce 'mosquitos' around sharp edges, especially when graphic elements are smallish.

So stick to PNG (retains alpha transparency if you work with it), TIF or BMP.

Though if the Business Card is for commercial printing, export as PDF (300dpi). They should be able to work with that.

[masque]

For commercial printing as Sledger says exort as PDF, select the commercial print option and you can't really go wrong. As far as the jpg goes, what resolution were you exporting at because jpg should be perfectly crisp, particularly at 300dpi or above.

[Jon G]

JPG is never perfectly crisp, regardless of the dpi value. It is a lossy compression format designed with color in mind, and the compression algorithm does not handle edges well. This is inherent part of the compression process, called block splitting, and visually resembles poorly executed antialiasing.

Generally printers should be ok with .tiffs or PDFs.

[Mole]

I knew JPG was probably the worst choice but sending every file type under the sun wasn't a nice option to the printer. (and time consuming to them)

Masque, I've tried JPG with 300dpi in export on many occasions and it takes the size of my image and enlarges it, but doesn't fix the problem. I thought it should stay the same size. (I presume I havn't turned something off to prevent this from happening?)


PDF I knew was the better choice, but I didn't realize Xara had that option. I just changed over my file to PDF and will print on a different comp today. That will definitely give me an idea how it exported and let everyone know.

Only if printers could print a .XAR file it would be so much easier.

Thank you.

[masque]

Only if printers could print a .XAR file it would be so much easier.

Thank you.

There are plenty of printers who do accept .xar files, depends where in the the world you are perhaps.

[gwpriester]

PDF/X is another good alternative. And most credible printers accept and can work with PDF/X files. To be a PDF/X file, all the necessary requirements such as fonts, image resolution, color space, etc. are all confirmed and approved in the final file.

Text is treated as text or vector outlines.

A JPEG file at 300dpi and with very little compression (around 90-100%) should actually work fine. My biggest issue with JPEG is how it treats areas of solid color. Reds especially tend to bleed and are not solid but blotchy.

For a bitmap format, TIFF is preferable.

One more thing. If your slacker printer insists on JPEG, and if she or he does, she or he is not a very enlightened printing professional, you can increase the resolution of your file. I would send the printer a JPEG at 600dpi.

Gary

[Mole]

Again thank you everyone.

I've printed the file today as a PDF (now that I know it's in Xara Xtreme)

The file came out PERFECT.

I always used JPG because I knew the printer could print it. I've never liked it because every generation save lost a little detail in an image and always gave me a headache with text.

I've confused the printer a couple of times by accidently sending her the unexported .XAR file. Only if Canadians figures out how good Xara is.

I know without a doubt she can use the PDF and prefers PDF files. So in the near future my worries are over. ... at least until the next problem appears...and I know where to turn to.

Thank you everyone for your help.

Mole