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Font rendering/smoothing in OSX


spock84
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Is the font smoothing in OSX really bad or am I imagining things? It becomes really unpleasant for my eyes after a while. At first I thought it was because I connected my screen via VGA, but now that I've fixed the DVI output I don't see much of a difference, at least not on text which is still kinda blurry (graphics are much better). I've tried all of the font smoothing settings, but they're all equally bad.

 

My screen is a 19" 1280x1024, which I suppose is a low resolution for a 19" these days, but still, it doesn't look this bad in Ubuntu or Windows. Going back to Ubuntu after a few hours with Leopard feels like having had laser eye surgery and 20/20 vision.

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OS X font AA kind of sucks compared to Clear Type (especially in Vista which is pretty much perfect), its normal for it to be kind of blurry compared to Windows. It should not be strangely bad though. Back in Tiger I had a weird problem with the fonts being too blurry/bold and having little "teeth" in the AA, I dont know what caused it or how I fixed it, but it ended up going away. Probably after I either reinstalled or installed a new graphics driver.

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Font AA in OS X is about making the fonts look as close to how they'll appear on paper, rather than making them super-readable like Windows does. If you turn down the AA option, it makes things better. I actually prefer OS X's font AA *because* of how it matches how things look on paper. I can't wait for resolution independance, because then you'll be able to use super-high-DPI displays at native resolution adn still have text be big enought o be readable, and much more clear.

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No, it's about preference. If your display isn't being detected as an LCD, the smoothing acts different, trying to smooth against a CRT, where it looks really good. There are a few plist hacks to make it think it's an LCD and smooth appropriately, I'll see what I can find.

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I dont think OSX AA looks anything like printing. Its way too blurry on certain edges, printing text is 100% sharp. Vista is the only AA that really reminds me that Im looking at something printed from a laser printer since its so sharp while still retaining perfect AA. XP was sharp but its AA wasnt as smooth as Vista.

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Not quite true. Windows font-smoothing is too sharp in my opinion. You don't have pixelwide text on you paper, because paper isn't made out of pixels. (Duh :)) OS X tries to mimic paper more by making the fontlines a bit bigger than pixelwide. But this gives a (for some of us) unpleasant blur. Just set font-smoothing to a minimum and you'll be fine. :)

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No, it's about preference. If your display isn't being detected as an LCD, the smoothing acts different, trying to smooth against a CRT, where it looks really good. There are a few plist hacks to make it think it's an LCD and smooth appropriately, I'll see what I can find.

You don't need a hack. Go to Appearance and choose "Medium - Best for Flat Panel"

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  • 2 months later...

Hmmm. Fonts look wonderful on a 24" iMac @ 1920x1200.

 

At home I have a CRT at 1024x768 (max resolution) and readability is far superior to the Linux/Windows components.

 

/me shrugs. $0.02.

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  • 1 month later...

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I figured it'd be better than posting a new one.

 

I agree with the OP. I'm dual booting Ubuntu and OS X, and I can't look at text in OS X for very long before my eyes start going crazy. I have tried changing the font smoothing options and they do not appear to change anything. This is NOT a preferences thing - my mum's real iMac has a 20" display as well, same resolution, and the fonts look great. As a comparison, I'm using "full" font rendering in Ubuntu, and no matter what I do to tweak the settings, it's impossible to get it as blurry as it is on the Mac side.

 

I'm using DVI on an 8400GS with the NVKush driver on Kalyway 10.5.3 (it says I can has model?, but QE/CI is enabled and everything else appears to work correctly) with a Viewsonic vw2025wm (1680x1050). I'm willing to believe that it's an LCD/CRT detection issue, since the default font smoothing is set to the "best for CRT's" option. Can anyone point me towards how to fix this? I'm guessing I need to edit something within the NVKush kext (EDID maybe?), but my google-fu isn't quite good enough to come up with an answer.

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I wish this topic got more attention because IMHO it's a serious issue. I have a 22" LCD and all text looks terrible on it. The killer is, I have a MacBook Pro from work and I hooked the DVI cable up to my monitor and guess what? It STILL looks terrible. I don't think it's a Hackintosh issue, I think it's an OSX issue, and there's a reason Apple's native monitor options are so limited.

 

I have tested OSX output on several monitors and on 20" xVA panels and 24" xVA panels it seems to look fine. However, on ANY TN panel and on most standard aspects 19" panels I can clearly see "chunky" looking fonts. (That's the best description I can come up with.) My personal half-baked theory is that OSX font rendering is EXTREMELY dependent on the color gamut and pixel density of the monitor and most cheaper monitors just don't look right. Unfortunately I am pretty limited in what I can test but I would love to see someone with access to a broader range of hardware take a serious look at this issue.

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Yeah I agree that font smoothing in OSX is not very good. But now I turned off smoothing for fonts < 14pt and set mode to "Medium-best for flat panel". My eyes go back to normal lol ) Of course font is still a bit blurry... I think that native Macs have more advanced displays with more DPI. That's all.

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  • 4 months later...

yerp, im afraid we dont have much choice.

 

It's not like Apple wont improve this rendering, but maybe they cant. I supposed a big company like M$ would've filed for patent on font sharpening techniques.

 

Comparisons between videos/text editing/web browsing here:

http://www.scavey.com/index.php/should-i-m...wing-renderers/

 

check it out.. i believe you'll understand it better

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