How to Render Anti-Aliasing & Unsharp Masking
Advanced graphic design programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and GIMP give you control over how the edges of objects, lines and text appear with anti-aliasing and unsharp masking. Anti-aliasing allows you to make text or lines you have drawn crisper and smoother without pixelation. Unsharp masking allows you to apply a filter to an entire image to make lines and edges between objects crisper and well defined. GIMP is free to download from gimp.org. Photoshop and Illustrator are available as free 30-day trials from adobe.com.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
Anti-Aliasing
-
1
Launch GIMP, Photoshop or Illustrator on your computer. Create a new image or open any image using the options under the File menu.
-
2
Type some text on the image using the Text or Type Tool. This is the T-shaped tool in the Toolbox for each of these three programs.
-
-
3
Click the "Zoom" menu at the bottom of the window and zoom into the image so that the text fills the screen.
-
4
Select "Enhance" from the GIMP Filters menu and click "AntiAlias." In Photoshop or Illustrator, click the bottom-right menu in the Character panel to select an anti-aliasing option. In Illustrator, these include None, Sharp, Crisp and Strong. Photoshop offers a fifth option: Smooth. Anti-aliasing automatically de-pixelates the edges of the text. This is most noticeable in the corners of the letters.
Unsharp Masking
-
5
Launch GIMP, Photoshop or Illustrator on your computer. Select "Open" from the file menu and open an image that is slightly blurry. Unsharp masking does not usually work well with crisp images or images that are extremely blurry.
-
6
Select the Unsharp Mask filter. To find it in GIMP, select "Enhance" from the Filters menu. In Photoshop, find it by selecting "Sharpen" from the Filter menu. In Illustrator, select "Sharpen" under the Effect menu to find it. In each program, an option window opens after you click "Unsharp Mask."
-
7
Click the "Preview" check box if it is not already selected. Each of these three programs provides you with the same three options.
-
8
Drag the "Radius" slider to select how many pixels on each side of an edge will be affected by the unsharp mask. Use a higher radius level for high-definition photos and a lower level for low-definition photos.
-
9
Drag the "Amount" slider to select the amount of sharpening you want done to the image.
-
10
Drag the "Threshold" slider to determine the minimum difference in pixels used to define what is an edge and what is not.
-
11
Click "OK" when you are satisfied with the settings based on the preview window. Wait a few moments for the software to process the filter, and the edges of objects in the photo should be more sharply defined.
-
1
