Transparency effects make all text JAGGED

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

Have a look and see what I mean (link below). It may be slight but it's very noticeable in some cases.

Just so you know, Anti-Aliasing is CHECKED in my prefs and Display Performance is set to HIGH QUALITY.

Check out the link below and make sure your resolution is at least 1024x768 so you can see the images side by side.

<http://216.157.102.130/IDCS-JAGGED-TEXT/>

Hopefully, you can all see what I am talking about now!!! This needs to be fixed.

[Scott_Falkner@adobeforums.com]

Is this how the text appears in InDesign or Acrobat? I'm using CS, and I find that transparency does not effect antialiasing in InDesign. If it's only happening in the PDF, then first, who cares? And second, the text is likely being converted to paths, so is not rendered as text any more.

[graffiti]

the text is likely being converted to paths, so is not rendered as text
any more.




That doesn't happen when you convert to PDF.

If it IS the PDF you're talking about, enable "text smoothing" in Reader preferences.

[Scott_Falkner@adobeforums.com]

That doesn't happen when you convert to PDF.




Are you sure? The issue is Raster effects anf transpareny on text. I believe those acts force InDesign to convert text to paths on export to PDF.

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

Depends on your export settings. If you use PDF 1.4 compatibility then
there is no flattening so all text remains text.

Bob

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

These screenshots I made are from INDESIGN CS 3.01. This is NOT from Acrobat!!

I think the best example of what happens is the last, where you can really see what's going on with the type "thinning" our as it gets aliased. I found this happens with any kind of transparency effect, which includes blending modes, feathering, and drop shadow.

I have seen this now on 3 different computers. I can't believe that no one else would be able to see this! Try setting up the same conditions! Place a nice serif font over a high res image and try the same things I did in the screenshots. Look closely and I guarantee you will see the same thing!!

[Robert_Levine@adobeforums.com]

I have seen it to some degree. I just don't find it as big a problem as
you do. That doesn't mean I'm minimizing the importance to you, just
that I personally don't have any problems with it.

Bob

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

InDesign also does not display what your design will look like with offset or stochastic printing. Remember that InDesign is displaying an onscreen representation of what the printed output should look like. You are looking at RGB; you print CMYK... etc... etc... There are some issues that designers must live with.

You could submit a feature request that Adobe improves this display in future releases but I would not worry about it.

You are looking at a preview of a transparency feature. The output will be the way you intend.

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

Robert -- I'm glad at least you have seen this. Maybe my eye is just so particular that it bothers me more. I can't believe I am the only one out there who is bothered by this though.

Jim -- I obviously realize that InDesign is showing a preview. I also realize that I can't see a metallic pantone in the program , but that isn't my point. You can design a printed piece in Photoshop and Illustrator and they are also showing previews. Try adding a drop shadow to a CMYK image in Photoshop. Do other text frames lose there anti-aliasing? No. Try changing the transparency of text frames in Illustrator. Do other text frames get affected the way they are in InDesign??? No way!

My point is -- I think this is a rendering BUG in InDesign. If you look at how Quark 6 displays EPS files (even with its so called "full resolution preview), you'll see it is no match for the smooth and accurate previews we get in InDesign. Now BOTH applications are showing you previews. But InDesign's is MUCH MUCH truer to how it's really going to print. And that's what InDesign should be doing for these transparency effects -- showing you a much truer preview of how it is going to look. This weird, aliasing problem is a BUG and it needs to be fixed.

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

This is not so much of a bug as it a feature that you would like.

This 'effect' may be exaggerated on different displays (LCD vs. CRT) and different drivers.

This forum is not for reporting bugs or making feature requests. You should contact Adobe for this in the appropriate area of their site. If you are polling other users to see if they also believe this is a bug, please ask such. Your initial post seemed to be more of a statement than a request for a concensus.

Your concern is about the display within InDesign. This should not be a concern. Varying linescreens and different RIPs will slightly alter whatever you see on your monitor anyway. This supposed bug is nothing compared to how much the type weight can get screwed up when screened. I would not worry about InDesign's screen display.

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

No Jim, you're wrong.

This isn't a feature I would like. The tranparency features already exist. However, they are implemented in such a way that causes the text to get aliased when used. That, to me is a bug.

This bug would be comparable to Photoshop clipping off a corner when you draw a square. It would still be only a preview of square and for the most part, resemble a square. But it would be a bug in the way the square is being rendered. THAT, to me is what I think is going on with this bug in InDesign. You turn on a transparency effect like drop shadow and the text where it was applied and other text frames all lose their anti-aliasing. BUG!!

And yes, I suppose I am polling other users to get their views on this bug. Many people don't care if their text gets jagged but any designer with a very trained eye will no doubt see this bug and be bothered as well.

I'm sure you're right that changing linescreens and RIPs can cause display issues as well but when I am laying out my projects in InDesign --way before I even think about the paper, linescreen, RIPs, etc--- I want to see an acurate represenation of a DROP SHADOW under my text!! Photoshop and Illustrator can do it just fine. InDesign CANNOT.

I will report this to Adobe for certain.

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

No Jim, you're wrong.





...I suppose I am polling other users to get their views on this bug.




Thank you for clarifying my wrongness about my own point of view. I had only suspected that you were filled with some sort of odd attitude. Clarity comes with discourse.

In Photoshop, you are offered the feature of setting the type antialiasing as strong, crisp, and smooth. This feature is not in InDesign. You may want to ask for this feature to be included in the next version.

I will report this to Adobe for certain.




Why have you not already? No one in this thread is developing InDesign. Your other post about font lists also attempts to address Adobe personnel. Please recognize that Adobe is not responsible for monitoring this forum for bug reports and feature requests. They have another section on their site for this.

Many people don't care if their text gets jagged but any designer with
a very trained eye will no doubt see this bug and be bothered as well.




I'm trusting that the folks that have responded in this thread all fall into the category of 'trained designer'. No one seems to be bothered with this matter. If you had a sense of history in digital page layout and the things we have all had to go through over the past 20+ years, you would share the opinions of others in this thread. While it is a slightly noticeable oddity, it is no big deal for the trained designer.

You may wish to see if you can return your copy of InDesign until they can work out your bug.

[Luke_Meehan@adobeforums.com]

Wouldn't your problem be that you have anti-aliasing checked in your prefernces, this will blur the edges of your text which is what you seem to be complaing about.

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

No worries Jim,

It's really no problem clarifying your wrongness to the group, or bringing to everyone's attention the enormous stick up your ass. Can everyone see it? It's stuck up there in the cobwebs of 20 years of design egotism and conceit...

I really sympathize with your long, arduous journey of having to use Quark for so many years --to see images as constant, low-res garbage, not knowing a world with layers in Photoshop, and using floppy disks when they were actually floppy. I am just not prepared to say that what we have now is all of a sudden good enough simply because it's better than what was in the past.

Perhaps there are no Adobe engineers monitoring these sites and it's possible Adobe ignores these forums altogether, apart from the feature request groups. I for one am glad that you aren't an engineer for Adobe because if you were, all of the applications would be sub-par -- just good enough to get by -- only adequate to get the job done. My guess is that the work you do is no different, since you don't seem to care about getting this BUG fixed and think jagged text is acceptable; i suppose compared to the ancient applications you used to use, it's leaps and bounds beyond...and that's good enough for you. You must be one of those "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of guys. The guys that are fine with still using Windows 95 because, heck, why bother with all the new fluff anyway? You can check email and surf the web just fine on your old Pentium II.

Hoping this BUG gets fixed soon since I'd like to see InDesign get even better. I'll be sure to tell Adobe that you'll still be using 3.01 when we've all moved to 4.0 and 5.0 because it's fine and you don't think things like this are worth worrying about.

Cheers, Jim.

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

Hey Luke --

No, it's the anti-aliasing that I want... If I unchecked the box in the prefs, the text would always be jagged. My problem is that the text loses its crisp, smooth appearance when these transparency effects are turned on. See the last set of images I posted. I think they illustrated it the best.

[Jim_Oblak@adobeforums.com]

Biz, do you attempt to insult everyone that tries to offer assistance to you? If you were not so cocky you might actually solicit sympathy for your issue. At what point did any of us say we used Quark? Biz, you are acting foolishly and you are not going to gain any favor by attempting to insult those that try to offer assistance to you.

Can everyone see it?




Apparently from the responses in this forum, NO. In an effort to be helpful to you, I tried to recreate this 'bug' on WinXP and OSX (on CRT and LCD) and was unable to see the same oddity that you had on your computer.

You failed to announce what kind of graphics card and driver you are using. You failed to specify the complete Display Performance preferences that you are using. You failed to describe the type of image you are laying text on top of (RGB, CMYK? / file format?). Without this information, we cannot try to produce the same effect on our displays. This is the kind of information that one would submit to Adobe in the form of a bug report, not a user-to-user forum posting!

Your incessant announcement of this 'bug' in other threads makes me wonder what your personal agenda is.

Try these resources instead of insulting fellow users that volunteer their assistance:

<http://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html>

<http://www.adobe.com/special/research/usability.html>

<http://www.adobe.com/misc/bugreport.html>

I'll be sure to tell Adobe that you'll still be using 3.01 when we've
all moved to 4.0 and 5.0




Why would you care about informing Adobe about my use of software? Biz, you are nuts. Learn to appreciate the varied advice offered by your fellow users in these forums or step off.

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

No Jim,

I don't insult everyone who offers assistance to me on this forum. Only you. And for the record, I believe you are the one who started with the attitude, not me. It was you who clarified my own point of view, as you might say:

This is not so much of a bug as it a feature that you would like.




And it was you who felt it necessary to sit high on your throne and dicate rules and regulations:

This forum is not for reporting bugs or making feature requests. You should
contact Adobe for this...




For the record I am having this dialogue of insults with you, not with anyone else. Because no one else has attempted to undermine my view on this, nor tell me how things go around here, nor tell me "not to worry about it..." or respond with other condescending or irritating comments. I believe those comments are reserved for your responses and your responses alone.

By the way, I am so profoundly honored that you would take the time and energy to search for my additional posts to study how I have responded to others in this forum. How about me giving you my email password so you can see how I respond to other people in general. Then perhaps your mission will be completed. Get a life.

You are correct that I am passionate about this. I think that InDesign derserves to have this feature work properly and this BUG should be fixed.

Oh, and let me appease you by giving you my full hardware and software settings so you can take some time to recreate this BUG yourself:

I have tested this on 3 systems. On each system, I have (AS INDICATED PREVIOUSLY) my Display Performance set to HIGH QUALITY for EVERYTHING and the background image is a CMYK EPS file. The typeface (as indicated) is Adobe Jenson Pro Light. The 3 systems I tested this on:

1) Dell Inspiron 8200-- Pentium 4 at 1.8Ghz; 1GB RAM -- WINDOWS XP. LCD Screen at 1024x768 and 32bit color; NVIDIA GeForce GO video card with 32 MB VRAM.

2)HP d350 --Pentium 4 at 3Ghz with Hyper Threading; 2GB RAM -- Windows 2000. EIZO FlexScan L885 20.1" LCD Screen at 1600x1200 and 32bit color; ATI Radeon 9600 with 64mb(or 128mb...not sure) of VRAM.

3)Custom built AMD Athlon XP 2000+; 1GB RAM --- Windows XP. ViewSonice P225f 22" CRT at 1280x1024 and 32bit color. NVIDIA GeForce 4 with 64 MB VRAM.

Cheers, Jimbo.

P.S. I love it when you call me BIZ.

[Biz_Notch@adobeforums.com]

UPDATE:

For anyone else who would like to try to recreate this, I noticed that I cannot reproduce this aliasing bug if I don't have a high-res (let's say 300dpi) EPS file UNDER the text. It seems that the rendering problem only occurs when the drop shadow (or other transparency effects) are applied to text that is over images.

I haven't tried this with other image formats although I suspect that it would happen with JPG, TIFF, etc. Also, I don't *think* the color model matters for the image -- I believe it happens with both RGB and CMYK images.

If anyone can test this and let me know, I'd be curious to know the results.

[Jonathan_Balza@adobeforums.com]

Well, I hesitate to get in the middle of this, but just so you know you aren't insane, Biz Notch, and so others can see what he's talking about; here's a little example I threw together.

The far right is text over an image w/ everything set to High Quality Display, but no drop shadows. The middle column is text with drop shadow applied. The left column is screenshots of the two, without panning, anything, overlaid in Photoshop with a "Difference" blending mode. The anti-aliasing has definitely changed.



As you can see, the problem does exist. Personally, I could care less about it, as InDesign is still displaying the text at a high quality. It isn't aliased, as Biz Notch seems to be saying, it's just anti-aliased differently. InDesign is not meant to be output to screen. (That's a general statement, I understand .pdfs...) Also, it doesn't cause any text reflow, so it's not physically changing the document.

So, is it worth Adobe fixing? Well, it doesn't seem like it is intentional, so it could be classified as a bug, but I (and I'd assume almost everyone else here) don't really have an idea of what it takes to fix something like that up. I'm not going to demand that it's fixed, because it doesn't annoy me personally.

[Scott_McCullough@adobeforums.com]

Hey, fellers! How 'bout you two taking this outside. I think Jonathan did a good job of summarizing the issue, illustrating its effects, and determining that it's a preview issue only. There's not much left to say about it now, unless you're intent on continuing the personal attacks. Please just let it die.