Subpixel renderingĪn obscure feature of LCD displays allows for more sophisticated font smoothing.
#Adding fonts in mac os sierra mac os x
For this reason antialiasing is not used for small font sizes on both Mac OS X and Windows. Most notably, small text looks blurry, as shown on a figure 3. Antialiased text set in 8pt Palatino ItalicĪntialiasing has its own problems, inherent to low resolution of computer displays.
More information on hinting can be found on Wikipedia.įigure 3. A properly hinted font looks much better on the screen than font rendered with default pixel positioning. Additionally to antialiasing, decent screen fonts use hinting to better match glyph shape to pixel grid. As the final result, the shape of glyphs is more true to the type’s design. It uses partial opacity to emulate smooth curves of the glyphs. Antialiased text without (top) and with (bottom) hinting To overcome these problems, several font smoothing techniques were invented. Another consequence of low resolution is that small glyphs of different typefaces are virtually indistinguishable as they are constructed from very few pixels. Low resolution results in rather unpleasant “jagging” or “pixelation”. Typical screens nowadays have 96 DPI (dots per inch) resolution, which is extremely low when compared with high-quality printers, where resolution of 1600 DPI is normal. However, on current computer displays pixels are rather big objects. This method is easiest to implement and fastest to compute. The simplest approach to display type is to use pixels of solid color to represent glyphs (visual characters). What is font smoothing?Īnything on the screen, including type, is displayed using pixels.
#Adding fonts in mac os sierra how to
The goal of this article is to explain these differences and provide designers with practical hints on how to deal with these differences. Font smoothing produces very different results across operating systems and browsers. This article discusses font smoothing, a feature that significantly affects the final look of a type on screen. It’s also the area where a designer’s control over details is surprisingly limited. Arguably the most important area of web design is typography. That’s why designers spend huge amounts of time polishing borders, textures and other visuals.
Attention to detail is essential for good design.