Choosing the right aliasing method

- When you're dealing with text, you often have curved lines. And, unfortunately, in the world of video graphics and motion graphics, we're frequently using fairly low resolutions. Sure, the advent of 4K and even 8K video is upon us, but compared to print, it's still far fewer pixels. As such, it becomes important to adjust your aliasing method. With the text selected, let's zoom in here. I'm just pressing Control + Plus to take a look at 200%. And I'll double-click on the text so it's highlighted, but choose View, and I'll uncheck Extras so it's hidden.

Now the text is selected but not highlighted. You'll notice from the popup menu here several different options. None creates very jagged text. In this case, you see that the W looks like it was built out of children's bricks. You can see a hard, stair-stepped edge as those bricks were used. Now, as you choose different methods, such as Sharp, this uses minimal blurring and partial opacity. If we step in here, you'll start to see a little bit of an edge.

Let's turn off the effect for a second there, and you can see that we have some blending or transparency. Now, as we continue to go through the different methods, Crisp versus Strong versus Smooth, you'll see that it gives us choices. You may also see some specific ones here for your operating system, but I recommend avoiding those. Normally, I'll favor Crisp or Strong. They produce a good balance of overall quality and character recognition.

If I zoom that back out, you may have difficulty judging the anti-alias method, but it does impact things. All right, that looks good. And in this case, let's save our graphic with File, Save As to capture changes. And I'll call this MLK underscore prepped. At this point, the text is ready. And, using the advanced controls under the Character and Paragraph panel, I've been able to make a pleasant layout.

The final stage is to double-check our work.