Taming That AA

Anti-aliasing, AA as some of you know it. For those uninitiated, Anti-aliasing or AA in short, is a technique in graphics wherein semi-transparent pixels are inserted to edges to give a smoother look.

If you have IE7, you would notice that the texts in sites look a little more clearer (but blurier) compared to the texts if you use firefox. That is because IE uses the anti-aliasing trick. Another example is the icons for Windows XP and 2000 (and below), notice how the desktop icons of the different Windows version varies? XP has anti-aliased icons while 2000 and below have aliased edges.

But, sometimes this feature can be helpful, sometimes a pain in the ass. So this time, I will teach you a little trick to control anti-aliasing in type layers (text layers) using Photoshop.

To the naked eye, there seems to be no difference between the 2. But take a closer look, and you'll see the problem. See how the 'I' in Specimen A became blurry? Compare it to Specimen B. It is crispier right? So let's fix Specimen A by;

1) Enter type edit mode (click on the text using the Type Tool).
2) Move your cursor until it looks like the one in the screen capture I attached.
3) Click and drag a horizontally. Do this slowly to see the effect.
4) Once the correct anti-aliasing is achieved, commit the changes.

*Note, moving the layer out of edit mode has no effect.

Well there it is! Yeah, maybe some of you might think this has no importance, but trust me, it pays to know these little details. Hope you find ways to make this tip useful. Until next time!