Text quality with aliasing

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 7:56 pm

I'm trying to product some simple pieces of text for my website, they are small promotion blocks that inform customers of special offers, about 200px wide by 100px high. I am trying to use white text on a dark coloured background, but no matter what setting I try, the quality of the text is always very poor compared to the normal Windows text that is displayed on the rest of my site.
I am using Windows XP, with the 'standard' method used for smoothing screen fonts, (in Display properties, click on the 'Appearance' tab and then the 'effects' button).
I've tried all three methods of aliasing in PI, but they are all very poor indeed, compared to the standard text I get from plain HTML on my site. Is there any way around this? Presumably PI uses its own aliasing routines and they aren't as good as Microsoft's?

The only answer I can find at the moment is rather laborious: create the text in an HTML package, then use FastStone Capture to cut and paste an image of the text, into my PI file, right onto the special offer buttons. Not really the most efficient way to do it!

Do any of you guys or gals know a way around this?

Post by **VikingAnimations** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 9:21 pm

What format are you saving these images in? GIF? Jpeg? What format-specific options are you using when you save?

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 12:08 am

Hi Robert, I haven't saved any of them yet, but the problem isn't in the save format, it's actually visibly worse quality on the screen in .UFO format (even before saving anything). It just appears to be using a much worse anti-aliasing algorithm than Windows XP uses. PI is making far more of the pixels a darker colour (the text is in white) than XP does, I've magnified two sets of text side by side, and the PI one has far more aliasing (if that's the correct way to describe it) - i.e. it looks blurred and undefined. I tried the three different anti aliasing settings, and none of them are clear like the standard XP one.
Is there some hidden setting I can use to fix this problem? It's not the end of the world, but it adds a lot of hassle to what should be an easy job.

I may actually end up just trying to insert HTML code into the Special Offers .tpl file (if that's possible) where it normally calls the picture, then the text will look fine and I can put my own button graphics behind it using CSS and four images of the button.

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 5:25 pm

I've done a test image to show the problem:

The top version is the PI one, the lower is one I've cut and paste in from a normal webpage I generated.

If you zoom in, like this:

you can see the clear difference.
The PI version is fuzzy and unclear, and lacking in definition.

If anybody has a solution to this problem I'd be very grateful!
I'm going to investigate other graphics packages as this generation of text is so fundamental to my website that I have to get it right.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Sun Mar 04, 2007 11:04 pm

You will get that with anything you create digitally and then zoom in on. You have to create your text at the size you need, not smaller. Zooming in will show the pixels, even with a photograph.

Post by **VikingAnimations** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 12:22 am

I think you missed the point, Heinz...

The small and the large graphic have two text samples. The fuzzy top one is done in PI. The zoomed picture lets you see the difference in more detail.

As for the solution, sisom, I have no idea... My version of PI doesn't even have settings for changing the anti-aliasing. But then, I usually use GIF Animator for most of my work.

Have you tried converting the text to an object, and sharpening?

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:01 am

Maybe I did. Looking at both samples again, I don't know which one I would prefer, to be honest. I fail to see where the bottom version is preferable to the top

They are both crap when magnified (zoomed in)

GKDantas · Post by **GKDantas** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 5:38 pm

Hi Sisom, I have the same problem here and is the first veryu big problem for me now. I got PI 12 to substitute the expansive Photoshop and everything works OK until I try to create some small text for my site (www.euqfiz.com.br looks at the bootm of the page with many logos) and the AA in PI is a shame for shure.
Maybe somepeople desagree but for who works with internet its very poor AA text yes!
When using fin letter ou stretched ones its a pain... hope Ulead can redo this AA soon.

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:21 pm

heinz-oz wrote:Maybe I did. Looking at both samples again, I don't know which one I would prefer, to be honest. I fail to see where the bottom version is preferable to the top They are both crap when magnified (zoomed in)

Hi Heinz, the problem is that I can't get the text in PI to look like the lower version (of the small picture!), which means it's either like the top version, faded and weak, or I have to select a sharper version of anti-aliasing, which then makes it look TOO sharp. There is no happy medium - and the happy medium is already available in Windows XP itself, as the lower version proves. That's what I want it to look like, but in PI, the text anti-aliasing algorithms aren't as good.

This affects every piece of text I use PI to create - i.e. banners and things like that - I simply can't use it to create normal text in banners, which means I now have to find a second program to do this with. All they need to do is amend their anti-aliasing algorithms so they work like XP's own, and/or add more user adjustable paremeters, so I can then set it to just how I want.
This problem means it will take me more than three or four times as long to produce what I want, as I'll have to use two programs instead of just PI, and then import in the text I create in the other program.

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 9:22 pm

GKDantas wrote:Hi Sisom, I have the same problem here and is the first veryu big problem for me now. I got PI 12 to substitute the expansive Photoshop and everything works OK until I try to create some small text for my site (www.euqfiz.com.br looks at the bootm of the page with many logos) and the AA in PI is a shame for shure.
Maybe somepeople desagree but for who works with internet its very poor AA text yes!
When using fin letter ou stretched ones its a pain... hope Ulead can redo this AA soon.

Yes, I totally agree. I use PI for my website too, and I have exactly the same problem: you can't make small text with it, that will be AA and NICE looking. It will either be faded (like the upper of my two examples) or you need to make it 'sharp' and then it looks like it isn't anti-aliased at all!

This should be an easy thing for ULead to fix: surely there can't be that many ways of applying anti-aliasing, and XP's internal version looks fine, so can't they use that method?

GKDantas · Post by **GKDantas** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 11:14 pm

Good question...I dont know if Ulead team look at this foruns for what people said about your software. I think the way to fix this issue is creating open beta programs like MIcrosoft, Adobe, Newtek and many others. And its this little things that make the good users away from PI... and it has many and many tools that are great and others dont have! Look for us Corel!