Turning off antialiasing for text

[pigeon]

there doesn't seem to be any good way to turn off antialiasing for text in affinity. by turning off the antialiasing in the blend mode settings, it just turns the antialiasing into a solid color, useless for fonts.

now i must use GIMP to type my text in there and then export the bitmap for use in affinity to achive this.

is there a better way?

[GarryP]

If you can give us more details – preferably with visual examples – regarding:

1. What you are starting with;
2. What you are trying to achieve;
3. Which font you are using (and version);
4. Where/how you will be using the result;
5. What you hoped to achieve by switching antialiasing off;
6. Why turning antialiasing off doesn’t get you what you want;
7. Which OS you are using (and version);
8. Which Affinity application you are using (and version);

...then we can probably help further.

P.S. I see that you have posted about the same thing in two different threads. That’s not an optimal thing to do as your replies will be split between two threads and therefore the advice will be ‘diluted’, especially for other people looking for the same answers.

Edited December 11, 2023 by GarryP
Added extra questions.

[Pšenda]

Pixel font without antialiasing? 

[GarryP]

Dunno, maybe.

They said that turning antialiasing off is “useless for fonts”, which isn’t my general experience, so that sounds a bit unusual.

What I do know is that without any details about the problem we can’t know what the problem is.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[loukash]

On 12/11/2023 at 9:45 AM, pigeon said:

is there a better way?

1. select the text object(s)/layer(s)
2. Layers panel → Blend Options cog wheel button → Coverage Map
3. adjust the antialiasing profile to your liking

Note that when working in Designer this is meant to be used and viewed in the Pixel Preview mode.
In the Vector mode, you may see minor changes depending on the zoom factor, but… in the vector view mode there's no antialiasing by definitition apart from the hardware display antialiasing. You want to use the Pixel Preview mode.

[pigeon]

On 12/11/2023 at 10:25 AM, GarryP said:

If you can give us more details – preferably with visual examples – regarding:

1. What you are starting with;
2. What you are trying to achieve;
3. Which font you are using (and version);
4. Where/how you will be using the result;
5. What you hoped to achieve by switching antialiasing off;
6. Why turning antialiasing off doesn’t get you what you want;
7. Which OS you are using (and version);
8. Which Affinity application you are using (and version);

...then we can probably help further.

P.S. I see that you have posted about the same thing in two different threads. That’s not an optimal thing to do as your replies will be split between two threads and therefore the advice will be ‘diluted’, especially for other people looking for the same answers.

Thanks, I will get back to this next time I need to do some more pixel work with fonts.

Also sorry for posting it twice. The first post was in an Affinity V1 feedback thread, which I noticed afterwards, was archived.

[pigeon]

On 12/12/2023 at 7:16 PM, lacerto said:

I do not think that there are alternative antialiasing options (other than what you mentioned, turning off antialiasing completely), so to simulate PS and GIMP antialiasing method options:

...you could try to achieve something similar by using e.g. sharpening and blurring live filters:

EDIT: ...or using Threshold Adjustment (if no kind of antialiasing is wanted, but something more usable with small sizes than what the blend option can offer):

Thanks a lot for this! I will experiment a bit with this approach