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Pixelated/rough font even with anti-aliasing


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Fair notice: the picture of my project has a lot of skin.  (I'm a burlesque dancer.)

 

Short version: my text appears pixelated at 24pt or less, even with anti-aliasing enabled.

 

Longer version: I'm a new Paint.net user, basically teaching myself as I go along.  The project is a business card.  I started with a canvas size of 2x3.5".  Both fonts that I used, one blocky, one script, look very rough around the edges.  Anti-aliasing is enabled

 

What might be causing this and what can I do to prevent it?

 

Thanks,

Moxie

post-135403-0-27263600-1393972610_thumb.

post-135403-0-43134800-1393972640_thumb.

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One way you can minimize it is to start with your canvas at double the desired final size (so, 4x7) at 200 DPI and then shrink it down to the desired size when you're done with the image.  That will have the side benefit of printing in a more clear way.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

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One way you can minimize it is to start with your canvas at double the desired final size (so, 4x7) at 200 DPI and then shrink it down to the desired size when you're done with the image.  That will have the side benefit of printing in a more clear way.

I had wondered if resizing would affect it, but was concerned that it would affect it negatively.  I'll give that a try.

Moxie

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Start big.  Really big.  Bigger than you imagine it should be....

 

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/27966-hard-copies-have-extra-borders/?p=405435

 

Printing requires all those extra pixels to make a neat job.  If you need your image made smaller for screen use you can always resize down.  Like this...

 

yhsjjie-2492.png

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On 5/03/2014 at 7:26 PM, Ego Eram Reputo said:

Start big.  Really big.  Bigger than you imagine it should be....

 

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/27966-hard-copies-have-extra-borders/?p=405435

 

Printing requires all those extra pixels to make a neat job.  If you need your image made smaller for screen use you can always resize down.  Like this...

yhsjjie-2492.png

 

Thanks!  And I like the font in the photobucket example.  Do you know what it is?

Moxie

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It's called Dragon Is Coming. I got it from DaFont.com, but check the license carefully. There is a link here: http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/28009-font-tricks/?p=405769

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You're welcome Moxie.

P.S That's a great username you have there ;)

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My guess is you're on Windows XP or Vista (without the "Platform Update"), where Paint.NET has to use GDI instead of DirectWrite for font rendering. There are some cases where GDI just refuses to do antialiasing even though it's being told to do so, and it doesn't tell the application that it's being overridden. Paint.NET does its best to detect this and uses an alternate antialiasing trick (it uses ClearType and then greyscale-ifies it), but it's not perfect and doesn't always work.

 

I can tell that the "Moxie" text in the first image just isn't being antialiased at all. Bleh. However, the "La Bouche" text is, as is all the text in the 2nd image. However, because you're working at such a low resolution and text size, the antialiasing will not look good, in part because GDI only antialiases in the x-direction and not the y-direction (if that doesn't make sense then don't worry about it :) ). GDI just doesn't produce very good looking text at those sizes unless it's being used for UI. It is not a good renderer for design and graphics stuff.

 

Solutions include: 1) if you're on Vista then install the "Platform Update" via Windows Update which will enable Paint.NET to use DirectWrite instead of GDI, or 2) upgrade to Windows 7 or newer (8.1 is recommended but 7 is perfectly fine too).

 

If you're already on Windows 7, then try out the paint.net 4.0 beta. It has a "smooth" text rendering mode (it's the default one) in the toolbar for the Text tool and it is probably more appropriate for a business card, especially for small text.

 

Also, make sure antialiasing is enabled in the toolbar, of course. 

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