Apoc112 Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 I notice that many of the fonts on my hackintosh are over-antialiased. Turning off font smoothing for fonts over 10 or 12 makes some things look considerably better while making others all but illegible. Varying the level of font smoothing doesn't produce anything noticeably different. Just overall, it looked much crisper in Ubuntu and Vista. Here's a screen cap, along with my graphics specs (2 birds with one stone!) its a PNG, so there really isn't any distortion on the lettering (at least on my screen). note: the graphics card shows 768MB vram, but it's actually only 256. The driver is NVinstaller4.1 running on 10.5.3. It looked exactly the same using NVinject 256 on 10.5.2. Smaller fonts down to 8pt look even worse. I have smoothing off for anything less than 6. Anyone have suggestions for a fix? Thanks!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sando Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 That's how fonts are rendered in OS X. Windows (and Ubuntu by default) utilise font hinting which adjusts fonts to make them more legible on-screen but has the downside of looking less like the original shape of the font. OS X renders fonts more accurately but are not as clear at small sizes. You can adjust the font smoothing style and anti-aliasing size cutoff in your appearance settings. Here's a comparison: http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/307/wat...lmac4436lg2.gif http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1285/wa...pcct6182wp8.gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apoc112 Posted June 20, 2008 Author Share Posted June 20, 2008 thanks for the comparison... that answers the bulk of the issue for me. it just doesn't seem so bad on actual mac's that i've used... possible that it's just because my screen is much bigger than a notebook's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scj312 Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 thanks for the comparison... that answers the bulk of the issue for me. it just doesn't seem so bad on actual mac's that i've used... possible that it's just because my screen is much bigger than a notebook's. Actually, it is probably because you don't have Subpixel rendering enabled. Go back in to the Appearance preferences and change font smoothing to Medium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apoc112 Posted June 20, 2008 Author Share Posted June 20, 2008 changes to font smoothing don't really change anything for me. i've gone through all 4 options while looking at random text, and i see no noticeable changes. is that something that requires a log out or restart? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Gonif Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 Changes take effect on a per-application level. The next time you launch an app, it will use the new antialiasing level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scj312 Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 changes to font smoothing don't really change anything for me. i've gone through all 4 options while looking at random text, and i see no noticeable changes. is that something that requires a log out or restart? Yes, you need restart applications or log out to make the changes take effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luh3417 Posted April 3, 2010 Share Posted April 3, 2010 I just upgraded to 10.6.3 and I'm getting this problem now. The suggestions that "mac smooth fonts always look like this" are wrong. I've seen smooth fonts, and I've seen this problem, and something is definitely very wrong. Also adding to the confusion is that the Appearance control panel changed. Below you can see what it looks like on 10.6.3 (and also illustrates the chunky font problem). I didn't have any luck using Font Book, it thinks all my fonts are fine. The settings in the screen cap below are just a work-around for the problem. They at best only hide the problem, by turning off text smoothing. I suspect the problem is related to the graphics drivers. And/or whether OS X thinks the display is an CRT when its actually an LCD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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