why crappy text?
Dave Stevens wrote:
Hi,
I only very occasionally use the Gimp and am trying to do something that looks
as if it ought to be straightforward but which isn't working.
I need to make a text box for a web site that will have a transparent
background. I can make the box, type in the text, set the background
transparency and export the graphic as a gif. All works as expected except
that the text is horribly coarse and grainy. Deja Vu Serif 18 point using
gimp 2.4.5 in Fedora 7. I've tried with anti-aliasing and hinting both on and
off with no difference.
Ideas?
Dave
Two things could be causing this effect. First, you have more than 256
colors on your GIF image. GIFs simply can't do large gradients thanks to
the 256 color limit and the ugly striping it causes.
The other problem might be that you forgot to leave a little background
around your text. GIF images can do transparency, but they only have two
levels of it: fully transparent and fully opaque. This means that if you
completely crop out the background of some text, leaving the edges of
the letters partly transparent, you will have raged, pixel-y edges on
your text.
The solution is to leave a little bit of your desired background color
around the edges of your letters. Now, instead of trying to store
transparency, the GIF stores the combination of the letter color and the
background color.
Evan Kroske
