Anti-Aliasing with Fireworks

The anti-aliasing capabilities in Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 helps users create great looking text graphics.

April 6, 2005 – Macromedia has a wonderful feature. The improved anti-aliasing capabilities in Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 helps users create great looking text graphics, which can result to a more readable and attractive text.

According to the internet, the two words making up "anti-aliasing" means:
• anti: Opposed to; against.
• aliasing: The appearance of jagged distortions in curves and diagonal lines in computer graphics because the resolution is limited or diminished.
On layman's terms, anti-aliasing means making the text graphics more readable. This can be done by substituting shades of the font color around the lines and curves to avoid text that looks broken or craggy from pixel to pixel.

Anti-Aliasing with Fireworks

Previous editions of Fireworks have anti-aliasing capabilities that have become very popular with designers and artists. With Fireworks MX 2004, it has four new anti-aliasing features that enhance on the existing options. The anti-aliasing options include None, Crisp, Strong, and Smooth. In addition, Macromedia provided "System" (Quartz on Macintosh) and "Custom" anti-aliasing features.

None Anti-Alias- disables text smoothing.
Crisp Anti-Alias- provides the sharp transition between the edges of the text and the background.
Strong Anti-Alias- creates a very abrupt transition between the edges of the text and the background, while maintaining the shapes of the text characters, and improving on the detailed areas of the characters.
Smooth Anti-Alias- provides a soft transition between the edges of the text and the background.
System Anti-Alias- utilizes the method of text smoothing found in Windows XP or Mac OS X.
Custom Anti-Alias- has expert-level controls over anti-aliasing such as Oversampling, Sharpness, and Strength. These controls determine the use of the different elements to create the transition between the text edges and the background.

• Oversampling determines the amount of detail used in developing the transition between the text edges and the background;
• Sharpness determines the smoothness of transition; while
• Strength determines how much the text edges blend into the background.

The new anti-aliasing features and capabilities provide users with a complete toolbox of "sandpaper" that can be used to smooth the edges of any working text, quickly and efficiently.

Users can apply text anti-aliasing options by selecting the Property inspector or the Text Editor after choosing the text object to work on.

Just a few suggestions from the developers of Fireworks, "Anti-aliasing is useful with larger fonts. And despite its capacities, always try one of the Fireworks MX 2004 pre-set anti-aliasing options first to achieve desired appearance."

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