PI X3 - your initial view points

Bobm03 · Post by **Bobm03** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 4:24 pm

Downloaded the TBYB from Download.com this morning.
Installed and fired it up.

After about 20 mins of usage, initial comment is Wow!
Everything seems to be there for trial purposes.
More importantly, everything there seems to work.
Didn't try to look for Corel Media Plus so didn't get to try it.
The "friendlier" interface seems "familiar" to me, kind of like PI10.

The only "con" is the requirement to use 1024x768 resolution.
I've got a few weeks to convince my wife I need with a larger monitor or new glasses.

Looks good.

Reactor · Post by **Reactor** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:34 am

1024 x 768 is the new 800 x 600 I'm afraid

Xyzzy2 · Post by **Xyzzy2** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:59 am

My X3 summary is "In the tradition of the most unimpressive upgrades". Plus colourful interface being a step back. While application may look nicer to some, it really doesn't help when working with images.

X.

Reactor · Post by **Reactor** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:01 am

I like the new colours, but I agree it doesn't exactly help with image editing.

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:22 pm

I've just had a quick try of PI X3 too, and first of all I wanted to see if they'd bothered to improve the text anti-aliasing, unfortunately they haven't:

It's still useless for small text, making it really unclear and smudgy. I just produced a test piece of text using HTML, which you can see is so much clearer. Why does PI not use the standard Windows font generation, and instead use its own inferior method?

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:44 pm

What I'm seeing is that your comparison is using 2 different sized fonts. That's like comparing apples to oranges isn't it?

Some fonts are meant to be used for smaller texts, to be crisper and clearer.

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:54 pm

Hi Vidoman, they're both Arial 12pt. Here's the HTML code I used:
<p style="background-color: #cc0a17;color:white;height:30px;width:100px;font:bold 12px Arial, sans-serif;padding:8px;border:2px black solid;">
Test text
</p>

And in PI X3 I used Arial, 12pt, background colour #cc0a17. So they should look exactly the same - but I agree, the PI version is smaller than the HTML version (created in Webuilder).

The quality of the font rendering in PI12 and PI X3, for small fonts, is really bad. It's either smudgy, as in my example, or if I set the anti-aliasing to 'strong' or 'sharp', it's too blocky, but never a happy medium (i.e. never as good as the standard Windows font display). This basically means I can't use PI for producing any kind of small text, which would be a large amount of the text I need it for.

It is literally impossible to produce clear looking text under 20pt (or thereabouts) using PI. Unless you have an example I could see - I'd love to find out how to do it!

Post by **Ron P.** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 3:01 pm

The difference that I'm finding is that with PI, it converts the text to gif images. That's different then text in straight HTML, is it not?

Xyzzy2 · Post by **Xyzzy2** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:41 pm

vidoman wrote:The difference that I'm finding is that with PI, it converts the text to gif images. That's different then text in straight HTML, is it not?

That's what sisom is talking about all the time. PI font renderer is bad. Worse than Windows and/or browsers.

X.

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:55 pm

Hi Vidoman, it's not due to the conversion to gif, it's like that on the screen of PI before you save anything. I've tried every setting I can find for text, but the rendering in PI is still really bad at small sizes. At larger sizes, it's not a problem at all, it's just the way it deals with small font sizes, with thicknesses of one pixel for the 'stroke' of the letter - the anti-aliasing is a mess and blurs and smudges out the text, making it look really amateurish. Obviously Windows has its own built in rendering for True Type fonts, which it does very clearly, as my attached image shows - it's such a shame that PI doesn't use something of the same quality.
As it is, I can't use it for making small text on graphics, in the past I've had to actually use HTML in Webuilder, write the text I want in that, on a coloured background, then use FastStone Capture to cut out the text, then paste it on top of the button or shape I'm using in PI! It's such a shame, because the rest of PI is so powerful and I love it.

immersive · Post by **immersive** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:02 pm

I agree with sisom, this problems has bothered me for a long time. Why should the text be so crappy compared to HTML? Also, if you have a couple sentences and you don't use anti-aliasing, sometimes a few letters overlap (and it is not line spacing or anything that can be fixed like that).

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:01 pm

Guys, you are beating about the bush. HTML text is just that, Text. Whatever you do in PI with text is not comparable to text, it is an image. Can you create a shape like a block with rounded edges and a metallic look about it in HTML? Don't think so.

PI is an image/graphics generating program, not a text tool.

Whenever you save an image in PI, whether it contains text or not, and you want to use it on the web, compression is needed to reduce the file size.

I generate crisp and clear text with PI in my images and it looks just as clear and crisp when printed. That is what PI is for. If you need text in HTML, write it in HTML and don't use an image instead. The deterioration you see is due to the compression of the image and not due to how PI handles text.

sisom · Post by **sisom** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 11:48 pm

Heinz, I don't know if maybe my version of PI12 is different to yours, but mine definitely degrades text when rendering it - it's nothing to do with compression - I can take a screen capture right off the PI12 page and save it as a .bmp file, it's still badly rendered. My example image shows the problem quite clearly - but if you know how to get PI to render the text as clearly as Windows does, I'd love to know.
Try this image then - a bitmap:

http://www.donkeyote.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Test.bmp

(You'll have to go to the link, because the forum won't automatically display .bmp files apparently).

Can you show me how you make 12pt text that's as clear as the normal Windows rendering? Both my examples use a screen capture of HTML text, pasted into a PI document, and obviously once the single image is saved, the same compression (or lack thereof in the case of the .bmp) is applied to both pieces of text. I'm surprised that you haven't noticed this problem Heinz.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 12:24 am

sisom wrote:......
Try this image then - a bitmap:

http://www.donkeyote.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Test.bmp

(You'll have to go to the link, because the forum won't automatically display .bmp files apparently).......

No idea what you did but the above images look as good as your original.

Reactor · Post by **Reactor** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 2:32 am

It doesn't look as good. It isn't as sharp. PhotoImpact's anti-aliasing really is good (it's not 'inferior'), but it's not so great for text. It never has been, but then, if you're going to use text that small on the web you should leave it as plain text and let the user view it smoothed according to whatever settings they have (none, cleartype, etc).