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BLURY FONTS


C

Catwalk

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Hi all,

I'm quite new, but more enthusiastic about Photoshop, and I met a problem few days ago, which I find no solution for even after turning the pages of the'bible' again min. twice.

What happens is that I'm editing a videocassette cover with pictures and texts on it, on several layers. The trouble is that the all the texts happen to be blury on the screen, and at printing as well. /I used Times New Roman, and Monotype Corsiva/

Do you have an idea what do I do wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Eva
 
Welcome to the community Catwalk. Hope you enjoy your stay. [honesty]

mmm... I'm going to assume you're not zoomed into your document properly. To make sure you're seeing your document at 100%, double-click on the Magnifying tool in the Toolbar. ( bottom right corner )

Are you creating this document to scale? i.e. the proper size for the video case? Hopefully you are, and are NOT creating the document too small and having to scale it up afterward in the print setup options.

To be sure, right-click the TitleBar and choose "Image Size...". Also make sure your document's resoltion is set to at least 300dpi for decent results.

Generally... as long as you don't "Rasterize" your type layers, your text should always be clean and sharp -- on screen and in print. Provided you use the proper dimensions and dpi as mentioned above.

Let us know if none of this helped. :B
 
Also, make sure that you have anti-aliasing set to something like "sharp" or "crisp" and not "none" in the drop down of the text options.

Make sure you aren't using any bitmap fonts that can't be scaled either. TNR should be fine, not sure about monotype fonts though. But if it's on both fonts, then it's probably something else.
 
This helped!

Thank you for drawing my attention from messing with fonts to the fact that it's sg. to do with the size.

Now I remember, that after printing the first sketch, I noticed that i need it to be 5mm wider, so i just simply modified it's size, without counting with the consequences...

Is there a way I could have resized the document without messing up the contents?

Thanks again.

Eva
 
Much better, but still a bit blury...

I did reconstract my cassette cover, and this time I made sure that it was the proper size.

The result became much better, - but for me - the bloody maximalist it is still not perfect. Anyway it is not rasterized yet. /Basicly I don't rasterize them, because I need to make modifications in the datas every now and then/

I did try this anti-alise thing as well, swithching between sharp, and crisp, but it didn't make much difference. :(

Any other ideas?

Thanks for the help so far... :D
 
It's a little hard to give any specific suggestions Catwalk without seeing an example of the problem. Would you be able to post one for us?

As i mentioned previously though... if your document size and resolution are setup correctly, and your type layers are not Rasterized, then your type should print just fine as far as clarity is concerned.

Beyond that, i can't imagine what the problem might be... not without seeing an example of it.
 
Example

Hi again,

So, here it is... Unfortunately I had to merge it down to be able to post it.

You can see that the fonts are quite bad well, on the backbone, cose they're pretty big fonts. But it is similar on the rest as well.

The funny thing I found - if I move this text a bit to the left it becomes a bit better, but then it's not in the middle. :\

What do you think?

Cw
 
Uhm... it looks fine to me. I don't see any blurry fonts. Are you sure you're zoomed in to 100%?? [confused]
 
I'm sure...

that I'm watching it 100%. ;\

THe round letters look to me a bit fuzzy, but I will stop killing your brain untill I print it with colour... In balck and white I cannot judge it well.


Thank you a lot anyway. :}

Cw
 
Yes, the letters are a tad fuzzy. Nothing to write home about though. Welcome to the wonderful world of Anti-Aliasing. :D

Generally, your type is very small. That doesn't help its on-screen appearance much. Second, some of those fonts simply should not be used at such a small size. The scripted fonts do not hold up well at smaller sizes.

But trust me though... if your printer can go at least to 720dpi resolution, your type should print pretty clear/clean. And at 1440 it would definately be clear.

Make sure though that your document's DPI setting is at least set to 300, minimum.
 
One thing to keep in mind is that if you are working with true type fonts that they will not always look crisp on screen, but they will print to the highest resolution of the printer because they are vectors deep down at their core. Unless you rasterize them, they will scale nicely but not always display correctly. This is true to a degree of other font types, but they take a little more knowledge of the formatting.

Often if you bump your dpi up too high you will get a muddier picture. This is more of an issue with screen printing, but I've seen it happen with desktop printers too. Also, if you bump up too high the file size can get out of hand on larger images (or if you go nuts with the dpi). This will cause the spooling not to work correctly or go unbearably slowly without any added visual benefit.

300 dpi like you're suggesting mr. keeper sir, should be fine, but about the most I would try on an injet. You might go a tad higher on a laser or dyesub if your source warrented it. I just like to point out that caveat since people always seem to think that more is always better. A lot of times they'll hear someone knowledgable tell them to "increase the resolution" and think "okay, lets try 2000dpi". Man if I had a dime for every time... hehe anyway. I like to stay in the 150-250 range for most desktop inkjet printing, unless you're working with specialty photo gloss paper, then I might jump up to 300-350. Most inkjet printers only have a linescreen of like 85.

One other thing that would impact this specific document that I thought about while I was typing this ;) is that it's got a dark gradient and dark type. So the antialiasing has less gradiation to move through to try to smooth things. That plus the thin serif font are probably just making some visual mud. Just for argument's sake, try looking at those fonts over a white background. Just disable the visibility of the gradient layer and see if they look any clearer. Just a thought.
 
Re: Much better, but still a bit blury...

Catwalk said:
... but for me - the bloody maximalist it is still not perfect.
Click to expand...

Um, Catwalk, a maximalist is:
One who advocates direct or radical action to secure a social or political goal in its entirety: ?the maximalists... who want the undivided land? (Dictionary.com).
Click to expand...
That is the ONLY definition for that word.

What on earth does that have to do with how "perfect" a design is?

Do you possibly mean "perfectionist?"
 
Perfection is the greatest degree of quality, aka maximum.
So in a rounnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndddddd about sort of way, the english language justifies his use of the term.

Actually not really.
 
Mea maxima culpa...

Yeah, fine, I was meaning perfectionist. And I'm really glad to hear that this was the first mistake you noticed in my English :D

Now let's check your vocalbulary in Hungarian, German, or Spanish... hehe :righton:

I'm still struggling with the stupid letters, but I think I can see the end of the tunnel by now. I will let you know if there's any improvement made.

Cheers. /Feel free to correct my English anytime.../

Cw
 
Here's a shot of a dvd case cover I made from scratch. The images are screen captures from the movie and the main title text on the back of the case was done using 'selections'.

iwo-full.gif


The rest of the text is Times New Roman and I rasterized some to 'scale' it.

This is a reduced size image. The actual size is 1239x800 at 72 pixels per inch resolution.

My cover printed to the correct size (using A4 paper size) and looks crisp...but then, I need glasses to read... [shhh]
 
You usually want to not rasterize to scale fonts as they will maintain their quality better as a font than as a raster graphic.

As for the design. Most of it looks good. The back text needs more "breathing room". Also, the picture on the front doesn't really blend as well with the bottom and it also is crowded by the credit titles. Try this in maybe sepia tone, I think that would bring out more feeling. Otherwise, the composition and compositing look good.

$0.02
 
:righton: Very nice design work Doc!

I do agree with MindBender about the "crowding" issue though... :\
 
Thanks for the critique and kind words... my goal was to try to emulate a 'professional' dvd movie case label which tends to be very 'busy'.

The text I rasterized was for the cast names on the back cover. If you've noticed on most movie covers, that font tends to be very narrow. I have been unable to find any fonts comparable as yet and tried to replicate it by scaling. I think my next attempt will be to start with larger text before I scale it narrower...I can alway reduce the overall size to drag onto my label from there.

Hopefully, spacing, ie: crowding, will be improved on my next cover.

Doc

(click the jukebox to go to my '40s jukebox)
 
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