Fonts are crisp only at 100%

[horizon981]

I may be only imagining this, but I'm sure my Photoshop used to be pretty capable at rendering font until yesterday. Today, I find that font looks smooth only at 100% zoom level, and becomes badly jaggy even at 110% zoom-level. I have the "sharp" anti-aliasing method on, and have tried deleting the preferences file.

In a PSD, there normally are different fonts in different sizes, but as far as I remember, zooming in and out never used to screw up the fonts as badly as it is doing now.

In fact, when I export these files to PNGs and view them in Picasa even at 200%, there is no problem.

I remember it was surely not this way before.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Poxt]

Try the same font at a larger size 300% rasterize> convert to smart object> and then scale it down and let me know if its still jagged?
My fonts have always looked jagged on PS because pixels, that why I import Vector text from AI.

[horizon981]

Well, here's what I did:

1. Opened a new file with 1024x768
2. Selected Georgia size 60
3. Anti-aliasing is set to "sharp"
4. Zoom level is 75%

The attached screenshot shows how jagged the font is. Although I'm a novice, I'm getting a feeling this is an overnight development. Why does it show fonts of any size crisp only at 100% zoom? Is this normal? If yes, funny I never noticed it before even though I work extensively with different fonts.

Finally, I did convert this to smart object, but since it was initially jagged, it remains jagged after zooming out. I then set the zoom to 100%, and the font became butter-smooth, then converted to smart object, and on zooming out it's again getting jagged.

[dv8_fx]

Horizon.... it's in the way PS displays fonts. At normal view, it appears smooth but when zoomed in, the jaggedness will show.

Coverting the font to a smart object will also do that. In a way, PS displays the the font as a psedo vector thus the jagginess.

[Hoogle]

You could change your preferences Edit > preferences> rulers and measurement and where it says type change it from point size to pixel size that way the font is displayed per pixel so tends to be a lot cleaner looking. However you have to remember a point size of 18 could be a pixel size of 100 or so they are a lot smaller and depends greatly on the resolution of your document.

[horizon981]

Well, thanks. I know I sound like a madman here, but I'm really surprised I didn't notice this before. I made a couple of web layouts before this, and given how sensitive I am to fonts (well, who isn't!), I should have noticed it earlier somehow. The trouble is the font appears broken both when I zoom in and zoom out. I don't think it used to happen when I zoomed out, but suddenly it is.
Something has gone wrong somewhere, either with Photoshop or with my mind. :(

[horizon981]

Hoogle: Sorry changing the units didn't change anything for me. Should the font look bad even at 90%? I don't remember it being so.

[horizon981]

Update: I noticed something very funny. The text looks great only at 25%, 50%, and 100% zoom levels. Anything other than this, and it's broken beyond hope. I hope this offers some clue. Thanks for all the help so far!

[Hoogle]

Photoshop does not do accurate zooms to process it quicker they actually put some code into it where it will zoom at original quality at some interim points and sorts of guess the 1s inbetween. There is some trick to to get it more accurate but for the likes of me I cant remember where I saw it I am thinking it was on 1 of the lynda.com typography tutorials

[Paul]

The largest size you need is a 100% of the original size.

Another thing is when working in photoshop make sure you tried all the different anti-aliasing modes of the text - SHARP/SMOOTH/CRISP ETC. I usually use smooth and it works. Depending on the font sometimes crisp is the better choice.
Make sure your dpi is always set to 72. If you try 300 for example it will look very bad on your monitor but on a high quality print it'll be perfect. And if you use a 300dpi for a flash it automatically resizes it to 72 which is a 4 times reduction in size and its kind of normal to loose quality.

Another thing is to use vector outlines for the type (convert to shape in Photoshop). It should always be perfect no matter how you resize it.