Drop shadows with very jagged edges when at 100% spread

[sidianmsjones]

When using drop shadows at 100% on a vector font, I get these extremely jagged edges (not good at all for my shirt designs).

But it gets more weird. I'm including here screenshots of the document at 50% zoom and 66% zoom, and you can see that the shape of the shadow changes drastically at each zoom.

On a sidenote: Yes, when I save the file as a flattened format (like a png) the jagged edges are still there.

50% Zoom

66% Zoom

[davescm]

Hi

To get an accurate view of how different elements blend you must look at 100% zoom. Anything else is blended using a preview and, whilst on 99% of images the difference is not visible, on some images, such as this one, there is a significant difference.

Can you check and show the impact at 100% zoom and also add a screenshot of your layers panel and the Layer styles showing the drop shadow settings

Dave

[sidianmsjones]

Good point. Unfortunately here it is at 100%. Very jagged.

Even worse, it's just as jagged when saved as a flattened png or jpg.

[davescm]

Hi

Can you show the layers panel and the layer styles dialogue showing the drop shadow settings

Dave

[sidianmsjones]

Sure. Here they are.

[sidianmsjones]

Personally I believe it comes down to some kind of anti-aliasing specifically with the drop shadow.

I tried every anti-aliasing option with the text (Which is CandyScript btw)...crisp, smooth, strong, etc. Those didn't change anything.

Also tried ticking on and off the aliasing for the drop shadow effect. Nothing. Tried deleting one of the drop shadow layer styles so there is just one. Nothing. Tried messing with my GPU performance options. Nothing. 😕

[davescm]

Hi

I can replicate this - and the issue occurs when you set the "spread" slider on the drop shadow close to or at 100%.

I tried rasterizing the type and it does not help so the issue appears to be in the drop shadow algorithm.

As a workaround if you can put up with a rounded shadow you could make a smart copy of the text, blur it to expand then use black and white, and curves layers to adjust the "shadow" and make it more solid  then finally a color fill layer with "blend if" set to show only where the blurred shadow lies.

I did that below to put a coloured shadow around the text

Dave

[sidianmsjones]

Glad I'm not the only one dealing with this.

It's strange because stroke works pretty well at large document sizes, and you would think the anti-aliasing would be the same for a drop shadow, but it isn't.

This is a very large drawback for any of us who work on large docs (a lot of us). And I actually found a forum post from three years ago that talks about the issue as well. So Adobe has known, they just haven't cared to fix it.

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

sidianmsjones  wrote

Personally I believe it comes down to some kind of anti-aliasing specifically with the drop shadow.

It is true of all of the Layer Styles that are applied outside the layer contents. 

Stroke

Outer Glow

Bevel & Emboss set to Outer Bevel is interesting, because it shows the individual vertices — I have used colours that make this clearer.

I can remember Noel, and possibly Dag, getting into a discussion with Chris Cox on a related subject some years back, but I am buggered if I can remember the details.  It was definitely related to effects around rounded edges being broken into a series of flats though, and it might have been 3D related.  Noel and Chris no longer post, but Dag might remember.

It's difficult to decide if Layer Styles are behaving differently because we never stop learning and understanding about how to use them, but my impression is that some _might_ be more finicity than they used to be.  Inner Glow is one that can play up needing precise adjustments of the settings to get a nice gradient.

[sidianmsjones]

I suppose you're right, the issue affects all layer styles that create similar effects. What is strange to me is how they all seem to operate differently though.