Smoothing Fonts Question

I just switched over to Vista and I think this may be part of the problem.

Anyway I use a free image editor called XNVIEW.

I used to be able to take a picture and just click add text and type it in and it’d look fine.

Now when I try this in Vista the fonts all have color to them. I try to choose the option for black only and the font looks funny. When I magnify the picture I can clearly see the font is black and outlined in color.

So I went to the paint program that comes free with Windows and I typed in some text. The fonts look funny there too. They all have color outlines to them. I belive this is to give them a “smooth effect”

I was surprised to see this in the paint program. Anyway I think it’s because of Vista. I am using Tahoma font. And it looks pretty bad to have a black font with shades of color all around it

Sounds like ClearType is the culprit. Though I don’t know why it would also affect an image editor.

You hit the nail on the head. Clear type effects any programs on windows. So what I did was disable clear type in my settings but the text on the jpgs and then re-enabled clear type.

I wonder if you can download Tahoma font that doesn’t do the antialiasing thing?

I looked around but didn’t find any free stuff so far.

I think part of it may be the standard for Windows Vista (how it comes shipped) is with the higher screen resolution. I like the lower 800x600 resolution so the way the antialias with color instead of shades of gray stands out.

How do you turn it off?

Don’t worry- found it but I already had enabled it to get a better image of text. However I still find on my 19inch screen (LCD) that the text is not as clear as that on an older CRT monitor.

Text is often considerably sharper on LCD if it’s a DVI to DVI connection, rather than the usual Analogue (VGA) connection, though it is usually fine either way if your video card is a reasonably good one with up-to-date drivers.

Guano, the video card is a good one- one of the reasons I bought the computer. Could you please explain a little more about DVI connection? I have analogue.

DVI to DVI is a digital to digital connection; there is no interference or noise; there is precision clarity of pixels; it’s generally sharper.

I don’t know the technical details but here’s a link that might help you.

Thanks very much. Will follow it up tomorow.