Text not sharp / clean

[Juc1]

Hi all,

In the attached CS6 file, the text colour is #fff, regular and anti-alias sharp and the background is plain (no effects etc). So there should be a strong contrast between the text colour and the background colour but it seems to my eyes that the text look a bit dull, out of focus and not a clean pure white #fff but more like a dirty white. Can anyone please tell me whether you agree with my eyes and if so any suggestions please?

Thank you...

 

[Tioga]

It is a bit faded I think. Opacity is at 100%? Blend Mode set to normal?

 

[Juc1]

It is a bit faded I think. Opacity is at 100%? Blend Mode set to normal?

There are only two layers and yes both are opacity = 100%, blend mode = normal.

Thanks...

 

[IamSam]

How does it look on black?

This is from your PSD.


I think this is an illusion caused by the pink BG, it appears to bleed into the white text.

 

[Juc1]

How does it look on black?

I think this is an illusion caused by the pink BG, it appears to bleed into the white text.

Yes I think you are right - the text in my original attachment is #fff but to actually look more like #fff it needs a stronger / darker background.

By the way with white text on a black background I would expect this image to have only two colours ie #fff and #000 so I am surprised to see that my firefox eyedropper tool is detecting various shades of grey such as #c5c5c5 (attached).

Thanks...

 

[Tom Mann]

It is not an optical illusion, nor is it due to incorrectly set opacity or other such possibilities.

Referring to the 1st screen grab (ie, from the psd file that you posted), the lightest pixel in my selection reads out as RGB = (251, 247, 251). The slightly darker one immediately to its left is (242, 230, 243). Neither is (255,255,255). In other words, neither is pure white. Both show bleed from the surrounding pixels.

However, this is intentional. The reason is because Photoshop applies a process called anti-aliasing to the rendering of fonts. Without it, the edges of fonts would be very hard-edged and look like tiny stairs.

Unfortunately, the blurring and color bleed can get even worse when you convert the image to a JPG and post it on a forum such as this. The reason is because of the lossy compression introduced by the JPG. The amount of additional bluring and bleed depends on the amount of compression used, and can go from unnoticeable, to terrible. ;-)

You don't see as much of a problem with a B&W image because the colors are compressed (ie, inadvertently blurred) more than the brightness values, and there are no colors in a B&W image.

HTH,

Tom M

 

[Juc1]

It is not an optical illusion, nor is it due to incorrectly set opacity or other such possibilities.

Referring to the 1st screen grab (ie, from the psd file that you posted), the lightest pixel in my selection reads out as RGB = (251, 247, 251). The slightly darker one immediately to its left is (242, 230, 243). Neither is (255,255,255). In other words, neither is pure white. Both show bleed from the surrounding pixels.

However, this is intentional. The reason is because Photoshop applies a process called anti-aliasing to the rendering of fonts. Without it, the edges of fonts would be very hard-edged and look like tiny stairs.

Unfortunately, the blurring and color bleed can get even worse when you convert the image to a JPG and post it on a forum such as this. The reason is because of the lossy compression introduced by the JPG. The amount of additional bluring and bleed depends on the amount of compression used, and can go from unnoticeable, to terrible. ;-)

You don't see as much of a problem with a B&W image because the colors are compressed (ie, inadvertently blurred) more than the brightness values, and there are no colors in a B&W image.

HTH,

Tom M

Yes that helps thanks. I have attached a pixel view of the letters "Ip" and I can see that the bleeding pixels are always the same position but their colour changes according to the colour of the background. In fact there are more bleeding pixels than #fff pixels...

 

[Juc1]

If I ask Photoshop for white # fff pixels it would be nice if I got some kind of warning about this such as "sorry I can't do pure white text - I need some pixels for bleeding".

:neutral:

Anyway suppose I have #fff white text on a #000 black background on a web page like this - would this be just #fff and #000 or would there be some third colour / bleeding going on?

Thanks...

 

[Tom Mann]

If I ask Photoshop for white # fff pixels it would be nice if I got some kind of warning about this such as "sorry I can't do pure white text - I need some pixels for (bleeding) anti-aliasing". ... Anyway suppose I have #fff white text on a #000 black background on a web page like this - would this be just #fff and #000 or would there be some third colour / bleeding going on? Thanks...

To answer your last question,I believe that the default setting for all fonts and all color combinations is to anti-alias them. However, it's easy enough to turn off. See attached. Just set it to "None".

Tom

 

[ibclare]

I know in a way this is irrelevant to the technical aspect of the discussion, but I'll add it anyway. Sometimes, if I'm not satisfied with the depth of text color, I'll duplicate the layer and set to multiply, adjusting the opacity if I need to. This works well for colors. IDK about white.

 

[Juc1]

To answer your last question,I believe that the default setting for all fonts and all color combinations is to anti-alias them. However, it's easy enough to turn off. See attached. Just set it to "None".

Tom

Yes I can turn off the anti-alias but then that causes a different problem for the end result. If I want clean white text without bleeding on an image that needs to be compressed would Illustrator be better than Photoshop?

Thanks...

 

[Tom Mann]

@clare - Yup, multiply works wonderfully for that.

@Juc - I understand that you want pure white lettering, but to answer your question I need to understand exactly what else you want, what you can tolerate, what you absolutely can't have, and if there are any other constraints you are operating under, so I need to ask you a bunch of questions:

a) You want to get rid of color bleeding, but can you accept blurring of the luminosity channel for anti-aliasing?

b) Can you tolerate a complete lack of anti-aliasing on both the color and luminosity channels, and hence the resulting stair steps, or is that completely unacceptable?

c) In what formats can you send your final output to your customer (or printer or whatever)? PSD, TIF, jpg only, PNG?

Tom

 

[bgoodman4]

I have run into this sort of problem myself and have come up with what might be a solution. I have not tried it yet but it seems reasonable so I thought I would mention it.

There is a vectorization app (free) into which you can import a PS image and then have vectors created that you have some reasonable appearing control over. My thought would be to get the vectors created and then clear the image of colour. Then, fill the vectors with whatever colour you wish. If you try it and it works please let us know. The app is available here (its the vectorization tool that is used by Inkscape so maybe Inkscape would be a better way to go http://potrace.sourceforge.net/

Attached is a grab from the publishers web page linked to above.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Bgood -

The problem is not that the OP is forced to start with a JPG and then needs to do something to improve it.

As I understand his request / situation, he is starting from scratch and could do his design in PS, AI or any program that he wants. In both PS and AI, text can remain vector based all the way to the point at which some sort of output is required and it needs to be rendered into pixels.

This is precisely why I asked him question (c): "What forms of output are acceptable?". If his customer / printer will accept vector output, his problem is instantly solved - he hands them his PSD or AI file and he's done. He doesn't need to go through the jpg to vector conversion route you suggested.

However, if his customer / printer will only accept pixel based output (eg, JPGs, TIFs, BMPs, etc.), then he needs to either up his resolution so that there are more pixels in each character, or get into all the complications / annoyances caused by anti-aliasing (hence my questions (a) and (b)).

T

 

[Juc1]

@Juc - I understand that you want pure white lettering, but to answer your question I need to understand exactly what else you want, what you can tolerate, what you absolutely can't have, and if there are any other constraints you are operating under, so I need to ask you a bunch of questions:

a) You want to get rid of color bleeding, but can you accept blurring of the luminosity channel for anti-aliasing?

b) Can you tolerate a complete lack of anti-aliasing on both the color and luminosity channels, and hence the resulting stair steps, or is that completely unacceptable?

c) In what formats can you send your final output to your customer (or printer or whatever)? PSD, TIF, jpg only, PNG?

Tom

@ Tom thanks for your questions. Just to rewind, this text will be used on a webpage so it needs to be compressed, maybe as a PNG. There will be about ten of these boxes on the web page and so the file size should not be too big. I wanted white text on a coloured background which is meant to look clean and bright but the text seems to look dirty. I am not sure yet whether this dirty look is affected by the background colour but the #fff text on the PNG's here for example look dirty to my eyes (please let me know anyone if you agree or disagree). So this dirtiness is caused by Photoshop adding non #fff pixels. Looking at the various anti-alias options it seems that the end result will be a different version of the same problem ie introducing non- #fff pixels. Anti-alias: none avoids the problem of introducing non #fff pixels but has its own problem of stairs / jagged lines.

Re your questions:

a) blurring of the luminosity channel - I am not sure what this means and so how it looks so I can't really say. :neutral:

b) stairs = no good

c) This is for a web page not for printing.

if his customer / printer will only accept pixel based output (eg, JPGs, TIFs, BMPs, etc.), then he needs to either up his resolution so that there are more pixels in each character, or get into all the complications / annoyances caused by anti-aliasing

So I think you mean that anti-aliasing is only needed with low resolution - so what kind of resolution would I need to avoid anti-aliasing?

Thanks

attached below =

anti-alias: sharp
crisp
strong
smooth
none