19 Replies Latest reply: Nov 12, 2012 4:54 PM by Astara_ RSS

    How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?

    Astara_ Community Member

      I create my layers with the pen-tool and some of them I'd like to have a few - several wide pixel border -- and want to use the stroke effect.  However, when I do, I get jagged edges on diagonals and curves.  

       

      How do I get these strokes to be anti-aliased?

        • 1. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
          R_Kelly Community Member

          How are you applying the stroke?

           

          Is the path a shape layer?

           

          Could you post an example?

           

          Your looking at the image at 100% view (actual pixels) and turned the path visibilty off?

          • 2. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
            conroy Community Member

            I agree, the anti-aliasing of strokes can be poor (sometimes terrible) and have requested that it be improved. It can be fine for print-resolution documents but screen-res documents can suffer badly.

             

            Noel showed me a trick. Use Layer Style Inner Glow and Outer Glow instead of Stroke to get better anti-aliasing. You need to fiddle with the controls to achieve each weight of "stroke" without too much blurring, but you can save presets of Layer Styles.

             

            Here's a comparison. Click images to view without forum resampling.

             

            gamma22.png

             

            Screen shot 2012-11-09 at 13.33.39.png

             

            Screen shot 2012-11-09 at 13.33.46.png

             

             

            That was with the default RGB blending with gamma 2.2.

             

            Next image shows the same document with RGB blending gamma 1.0 (control is in Edit > Color Settings). There is clearly less stairstepping on the Stroke but using a gamma 1.0 setting will change the rendering of semi-transparent layers, etc. Still, it's something that you might find useful sometime.

             

            gamma10.png

            • 3. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
              Noel Carboni Community Member

              I always use the gamma 1.0 RGB blending setting myself.

               

              But I don't have a situation where others work with my Photoshop files.

               

              -Noel

              • 4. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                conroy Community Member

                It would be useful to have a document setting for blending-gamma that will override the application setting. And it annoys me that the falloff function that creates brush softness does not take blending gamma other than 2.2 into account. Taking that a step further, I think the user should be able to specify brush falloff profile by a curve.

                • 5. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                  conroy Community Member

                  From a more modern app:

                   

                  Screen-shot-2012-11-09-at-16.36.58.png

                  • 6. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                    emil emil Community Member

                    conroy wrote:

                    ...Taking that a step further, I think the user should be able to specify brush falloff profile by a curve.

                    Conroy,

                    what program is that curve from?

                    I might be wrong but if I understand it correctly, I think that curve controls the smoothens of the brush which can be possible only with procedural brushes, that is, the brush shape is software generated. In Photoshop the brush shape is a fixed raster image (profile) that cannot be changed in any other way but by replacing the image. The problem with procedural brushes is that you can not freely create any shape.

                    • 7. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                      conroy Community Member

                      emil emil wrote:

                       

                      [... The problem with procedural brushes ...]

                       

                      Problem?

                       

                      I don't see how being able to define falloff by curve would cause any user a problem. If you didn't want it, you could pretend it's not there. I suggested it as an addition to Photoshop's capabilities, not as a replacement for current features.

                       

                      It's from Cinema 4D. C4D has bitmap brushes and procedural brushes.

                      • 8. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                        Noel Carboni Community Member

                        emil emil wrote:

                        In Photoshop the brush shape is a fixed raster image (profile) that cannot be changed in any other way but by replacing the image. The problem with procedural brushes is that you can not freely create any shape.

                         

                        I have never looked under those particular covers...  Are you saying that there are 100 different raster brushes that define a soft round brush, so that the Hardness control picks from amongst them?

                         

                        For what it's worth, I can definitely see where it would be kind of nice to be able to change the edge characteristics of brushes for which there are already controls like Hardness.

                         

                        I work on a lot of astroimages, at some stages using a linear color profile, and I do sense the differences in brush characteristics between when working on such images and on more typical gamma 2.2 images.

                         

                        -Noel

                        • 9. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                          conroy Community Member

                          Noel Carboni wrote:

                           

                          emil emil wrote:

                          In Photoshop the brush shape is a fixed raster image (profile) that cannot be changed in any other way but by replacing the image. The problem with procedural brushes is that you can not freely create any shape.

                           

                          I have never looked under those particular covers...  Are you saying that there are 100 different raster brushes that define a soft round brush, so that the Hardness control picks from amongst them?

                           

                           

                          I was about to ask the same because the basic round brush can be specified with size 1 to 5000 px, and hardness 0 - 100%. I find it hard to believe that Photoshop has a store of thousands of bitmaps to represent a brush whose profile can be generated procedurally with a Gaussian (or similar) function.

                          • 10. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                            emil emil Community Member

                            Only the round brush profile in Photoshop is procedural, any other brush profile is a raster image. I have hundreds of them and this is what I use mostly, I thought that the question was in regard to making all brushes procedural. Yes, the round brush can be added a falloff control, and I'm all for more procedural brushes for shapes that can be made with mathematical procedures.

                             

                            edit: forgot to mentioned that the bristle brushes have profiles generated procedurally too. (but I whish they were better)

                            • 11. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                              conroy Community Member

                              The round brush is the one that I was suggesting could be enhanced by a falloff curve editor.

                               

                              A similar square one (instead of the current square bitmaps) would have been useful to me many times (guess where you'll find that, too).

                              • 12. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                Astara_ Community Member

                                Well , part of my prob was that the layer I was working on also had feather on -- specifically to try to avoid the jaggies -- didn't realize feathering made them worse:

                                 

                                buttons.png

                                Very counter-intuitive... but the jagged lines got about twice as bad with a 1px feather....it cleans up alot with no feather (!!).

                                 

                                I tried using the dual-glow, BUT, in the image above, the little arch in the middle of each circle is another line -- and it's edge

                                comes REAL close to the edge of the circle from the inside --

                                causing a doubling of the 2 glows as they overlap each other.

                                 

                                FWIW, I for this particular task i had opacity set to zero --

                                and was only using the layer for the outline effect.

                                 

                                I have some other drawings that I'd like to use strokes, but without anti-aliasing, I'm really thinking they look too icky.

                                 

                                I can't believe PS is 20+ years behind the ball on this -- anti aliasing has been around for a long time.   How'd it manage to get left out?   Not that I'll be likely to see it by the time they put it in...

                                 

                                @conroy - I'll have to check on Cinema 4D, I have something else that has procedural brushes, I think -- Sketchbook Pro, but it's really primitive for most other things -- it really is aimed only at sketches....

                                 

                                Ya know, while I like the 3D ops in PS (not that I use them that much anymore as I've moved to vector graphics...), i really wish they'd invest more in vector (like the procedural brush -- is a dynamically applied (from what it looks like) vector with it's intersection based on user pressure.  

                                 

                                It could replicate any shape of a regular brush if it had a depth

                                dimension and not just the surface outline. 

                                 

                                FWIW, I've tried Illustrator -- but it's no where near the usability level of PS.  Adobe would really be doing themselves and customers a favor if they folded it's feature set into PS over time, as it's interface and usability are not at all intuitive to someone used to PS. 

                                 

                                Sorry didn't post earlier... but was watching/reading the conversation with interest... but nothing was telling me how to get anti-aliasing (because it's a broken/missing feature that you have to think of multiple ways to workaround)...so between my being sad about that, I also had problems logging into the site the other night.. when I DID try .. I could read the conversation, but every time I tried to login, I got some error message about login's not being available or something I took to mean that...

                                 

                                This time, I clicked on the messages in my inbox, and was already logged in when I got to the message, so I think some

                                authentication or login server was down last I tried).

                                 

                                Besides just making anti-aliasing work, it might be nice

                                if feathering wasn't counter-intuitive...or am I missing something there...

                                 

                                Oh well... I've been in the midst of converting a few bitmapped outlines to vectors when I got feedback bout the jaggy lines in a pic... didn't even notice it until I looked carefully.. Ouch.

                                 

                                 

                                A*a..

                                • 13. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                  conroy Community Member

                                  Astara_ wrote:

                                   

                                  Very counter-intuitive... but the jagged lines got about twice as bad with a 1px feather....it cleans up alot with no feather (!!).

                                   

                                  That's right, Layer Style Stroke applied to feathered edges, such as those created with Brush Tool, have absolutely dreadful ant-aliasing. I complained about that but, as usual, received no word from Adobe to suggest that they have even noticed my post, so I don't have much hope for an improvement. See thread http://forums.adobe.com/message/4564175#4564175

                                  • 14. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                    Noel Carboni Community Member

                                    Astara_ wrote:

                                     

                                    Well , part of my prob was that the layer I was working on also had feather on -- specifically to try to avoid the jaggies -- didn't realize feathering made them worse:

                                     

                                    buttons.png

                                    Very counter-intuitive... but the jagged lines got about twice as bad with a 1px feather....it cleans up alot with no feather (!!).

                                     

                                    Not sure I know exactly what you mean by "feather" in this context (this may just be a lack of coffee this morning).

                                     

                                    Would it be possible for you to show an A/B comparison including the layer panel and the setting(s) that is/are different?  I know it's described by our examples over in the other thread as well.

                                     

                                    I'm thinking that if Adobe really did want to fix what you're describing, they might find the description here confusing enough to not to want to spend time on it, without being led carefully down the path to see that it's the same as what conroy wrote up.

                                     

                                    -Noel

                                    • 15. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                      Astara_ Community Member

                                      stroke+feather2.png

                                      Well... did an A/B/C answer.

                                       

                                      A) top is 1px w/1px feather. (all layers have fill set to .. opacity @100%). 

                                      It's the worst of the bunch.

                                       

                                      B) middle is a 1px line w/no feather

                                       

                                      C) bottom uses inner+outerglow set to 0! with a linear taper on both  If you zooom in at full res, it looks like the bottom one is about 32-64x AA, the middle maybe 4x-8x, the top is pretty bad.

                                       

                                      Is this more clear?

                                      • 16. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                        Noel Carboni Community Member

                                        Yes.  Now it's clear you're making circular shapes and the Feather setting you were referring-to is in the Masks panel.

                                         

                                        Only thing I might suggest as a workaround would be to work at a much higher pixel count.

                                         

                                        -Noel

                                        • 17. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                          Astara_ Community Member

                                          I made a circular shape to to show the problem.  I use other than circular shapes. 

                                           

                                          I try to work in a high res usually, but don't always have the luxury when my sources are sometimes screen size and I'm working from an upscaled version as it is. 

                                           

                                          Another problem that is not insurmountable when working with effects, is that they don't scale when you scale the picture unless you convert them to bitmaps -- which you can do only in final release, but it's still another "gotcha" step I've been burned by and figured out I needed to manually convert it to a bitmapped image before I changed sizes.

                                           

                                          W/things I can scan, I work in 7-10K sized images, but At those sizes, PS starts developing problems and can't do real

                                          time updating in vector pictures.  Eventually it shuts off real time updates alltogether, and after I move vectores around or change effects, I have to *move* the picture (or resize the view) for it to actually do a 'redraw' and show my changes.

                                           

                                          Generally a pain.

                                           

                                          Much of this is about ease-of-use... not that we can't find ways to hack around the problems.  But .. it would be nice if alot of these rough edges were smoothed out.

                                           

                                          Even nicer if they allowed those of us reporting the problems beta/test versions that could be converted to permanent copies at low cost or free based on level of beta-input...

                                           

                                          The only beta testing I have seen lately from companies (including Adobe, unfortunately)  is releasing beta's as products and customers get run through the mill with problems until the first few bug-fix/maint releases come out...

                                          • 18. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                            conroy Community Member

                                            Astara_ wrote:

                                             

                                            Another problem that is not insurmountable when working with effects, is that they don't scale when you scale the picture unless you convert them to bitmaps -- which you can do only in final release, but it's still another "gotcha" step I've been burned by and figured out I needed to manually convert it to a bitmapped image before I changed sizes.

                                             

                                             

                                            That's not strictly true although scaled effects often don't look the same as scaled rasterized effects. There is a "Scale Styles" checkbox in the Image Size dialog, but numerical values in effects are integer and only special cases will look the same after a given scaling as a similarly scaled rasterization.

                                            • 19. Re: How can I get a layer "strokes" anti-aliased?
                                              Astara_ Community Member

                                              Yes -- I didn't mention them due to those limitations the fact that it doesn't seem to work very smoothly -- and how could it without any indication of 'intent'.. i.e. was the effect relative to the size of the border (say 5px, or to the size of the layer?). 

                                               

                                              If sizes for effects could be specified in terms of sizes of a border line OR sizes of the layer's area (linear or squared), then resizing might give more expected results.

                                               

                                              I think it's similar to what you are saying about it not looking the same as a rasterized/bitmapped scale....(not that those always give you what you want, but usually not that unpredictable).