[drainyoo]

Are is it just my eyes. Every since I installed Tiger I see a blue and red edge on all the text. Ive messed with the Font Smoothing settings but nothing works.

Is this a Tiger issue?

[bmedina]

What kind of monitor do you have?

[mAxximo]

Font blurring sucks less in Tiger. Try “Light” in System Preferences.

[Chuckit]

Earlier versions of OS X were set to Standard as the default font rendering, whereas Tiger defaults to "Automatic," which will be the same as Standard if you're using a CRT monitor or Medium if you're using an LCD. On my PowerBook, I think the best-looking option is "Light." Some small text in Safari (and only Safari, for whatever reason) gets a little bit rainbowy on occasion, but otherwise it looks sharp as an X-Acto Knife.

[ZXspectrum]

Light Light Light

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by drainyoo

Are is it just my eyes. Every since I installed Tiger I see a blue and red edge on all the text. Ive messed with the Font Smoothing settings but nothing works.

Is this a Tiger issue?

No, it behaves correctly. You use a TFT so Tiger uses subpixel anti-aliasing. Some people might notice colour fringing when subpixel anti-aliasing is used. Before that it was using the "Standard – best for CRT" setting which is regular anti-aliasing.

You want to switch the font smoothing settings back to "Standard - best for CRT" and then you need to log out for the changes to take effect.

[I was David B.]

Originally Posted by drainyoo

Are is it just my eyes. Every since I installed Tiger I see a blue and red edge on all the text. Ive messed with the Font Smoothing settings but nothing works.

Is this a Tiger issue?

Since I found out how I have switched off font smoothing. I prefer that. The fonts are crisp and look very clean, without blurry edges.
If you want to try how that looks like it is easily done with Tinker Tool. Donwload it here. It is free.

[drainyoo]

Originally Posted by bmedina

What kind of monitor do you have?

I have a powerbook G4.

[ZXspectrum]

silk from Unsanity is a good app for font+

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by drainyoo

I have a powerbook G4.

Then try either the Light or the Standard settings. You don't have to log out, but you will have to relaunch any running applications for them to pick up the new setting.

[OreoCookie]

For me, automatic is fine. I don't see any fringes on text.

What you complain about has been discussed in-depth before, the culprit/main feature being sub-pixel rendering.

[drainyoo]

Originally Posted by bmedina

Then try either the Light or the Standard settings. You don't have to log out, but you will have to relaunch any running applications for them to pick up the new setting.

I tried those and I dont see a difference. This sucks. Its really bugging out my eyes.

[Chuckit]

You logged out and back in after changing the setting, right? It's hard to believe you couldn't see any difference between Medium, Light and Standard, all of which look really different on every display I've ever seen.

[mAxximo]

Every single user I've seen changing their settings —including myself of course— think the results should occur right before their eyes. Most don't know what to do when they see no real-time changes. Having to log out and back in or quitting apps to see the difference is so 1990 that nobody expects having to do that now.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by drainyoo

I dont see a difference. This sucks.

You need to log out for the changes to take effect. This may be "so 1990", but it's the way it is.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by mAxximo

Every single user I've seen changing their settings —including myself of course— think the results should occur right before their eyes. Most don't know what to do when they see no real-time changes. Having to log out and back in or quitting apps to see the difference is so 1990 that nobody expects having to do that now.

Okay? I don't think anybody's said otherwise. Are you insinuating that I secretly sabotaged the prefpane?

[mAxximo]

I wasn't referring to what you said, I'm sorry. Just a general comment.

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by mAxximo

Having to log out and back in or quitting apps to see the difference is so 1990 that nobody expects having to do that now.

You mean, "so OS 9"?

[Chuckit]

Actually, couldn't OS 9 turn font smoothing on and off on the fly?

[TETENAL]

Yes, OS 9 can turn it on and off on the fly.

[mAxximo]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Actually, couldn't OS 9 turn font smoothing on and off on the fly?

Exactly.

[lookmark]

Yeah, but OS 9's font smoothing was pretty awful-looking. You want to talk about smudged and blurry...

I'll have to try "Light" again.... So far, though, I find anything but "Standard" -- even on a LCD display -- really poor for white text-on-black/color backgrounds.

[mAxximo]

Originally Posted by lookmark

Yeah, but OS 9's font smoothing was pretty awful-looking. You want to talk about smudged and blurry...

It was beyond awful, turning it OFF was the first thing I used to do whenever I bought a new Mac. But it was real-time back then, that's the point.

[Chuckit]

I was just saying, having to quit apps in order to make font smoothing changes take effect is not OS 9-like, because OS 9 did it another way.

[CharlesS]

OS 9 could turn font smoothing on and off on the fly, but its font smoothing was so horrible that you'd never want to turn it on in the first place. So, isn't it kind of a moot point?

[mAxximo]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

OS 9 could turn font smoothing on and off on the fly, but its font smoothing was so horrible that you'd never want to turn it on in the first place. So, isn't it kind of a moot point?

You won't find me justifying a poor implementation in OS X with a less than stellar feature in OS 9. Even if —hypothetically— the Mac required a reboot to make the font smoothing changes active that's still no excuse for OS X to not display them on the fly after five major versions.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by mAxximo

You won't find me justifying a poor implementation in OS X with a less than stellar feature in OS 9. Even if —hypothetically— the Mac required a reboot to make the font smoothing changes active that's still no excuse for OS X to not display them on the fly after five major versions.

Whatever you say. There's got to be something better than this to complain about.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

OS 9 could turn font smoothing on and off on the fly, but its font smoothing was so horrible that you'd never want to turn it on in the first place.

That's a very trollish statement. I like the font smoothing of OS X better than that of OS 9, but OS 9's font smoothing was not so awful looking that you did not want to turn it on. It was a good compromise between speed and quality for the time. Better quality was available by a third party control panel which - like OS 9 itself – allowed the switching of anti-aliasing settings on the fly.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

That's a very trollish statement. I like the font smoothing of OS X better than that of OS 9, but OS 9's font smoothing was not so awful looking that you did not want to turn it on. It was a good compromise between speed and quality for the time. Better quality was available by a third party control panel which - like OS 9 itself – allowed the switching of anti-aliasing settings on the fly.

Um, no. I used the classic OS for years, and I can definitely tell you that its font smoothing was terrible. It was the first thing I always turned off, right along with the QuickTime AutoPlay feature, and this was also true of everyone else I knew who used it. The only person I knew who ever liked this thing was my younger sister, who was 12 or so at the time, and was a button-pusher who liked to turn on everything that had a check box. Every time she did that, the next person who had to use the computer would curse and turn it back off.

I just switched my dad to OS X from OS 9 last week. I was talking to him over the phone and over iChat, explaining to him how stuff works and showing him the new features like Exposé, Spotlight, Dashboard, etc., and he started saying that something was wrong with his monitor. I asked him what the problem was, and he was complaining that the text looked like crap and he couldn't stand it, and that the text was much better on his old OS 9 computer. My first thought was that he might have been complaining about the sub-pixel rendering like some people in this thread, but what it turned out to be was that he was using MS Word v. X, and his version was 10.1.0 which didn't have support for Quartz text smoothing, so it was using the same QuickDraw anti-aliasing that OS 9 had. And he couldn't stand it. I updated him to 10.1.6, and showed him how to check the "Enable Quartz Text Smoothing" check box in Word's prefs, and he was immediately relieved. He told me, "Okay, now I guess I'll have to find something else to bitch about! " This was a guy who'd been using OS 9 for years...

Hell, even mAxximo agrees that OS 9's AA was awful.

[bmedina]

Interesting article on Tiger's font smoothing:
http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/...font-smoothing

Nothing has changed but the default for LCD panels.

[IG88]

Hi there .. this is my first post as a mac user on this forum . I have been trawling the internet since I first got my new dual 2ghz g5 last week looking for a solution to poor resolution and blurry fonts. I thought I had made a big mistake trying to switch to mac as my eyes were destroyed using osx and I was starting to doubt my lcd panel and my eyes until I changed the refresh rate from 75hertz to 60 hertz in system preferences and I couldn't believe my eyes .. what a difference. .... Just in case anyone is having similar problems I'm just letting you know how it went for me .. I hope this helps someone else..

the hardware I have is :
Dual 2ghz g5 ATI Radeon 9600
Chipset Model: ATY,RV351
Philips 170S4 Analogue lcd panel

[MacMan4000]

I was board... so I made this nifty demo:
Tiger Font Smoothing Demo

(code stolen and butchered from here)

[Detrius]

Originally Posted by MacMan4000

I was board... so I made this nifty demo:
Tiger Font Smoothing Demo

(code stolen and butchered from here)

That's a nice demo, but we can't see what it would look like on our monitors, since it's magnified so much. Maybe you could show it magnified and unmagnified.

[OreoCookie]

I don't think you can see the sub-pixel rendering here at all. All I see are squarish blocks (with sub-pixel rendering, you should see rectangles, the horizontal resolution is three times the vertical resolution).

[MacMan4000]

Originally Posted by Detrius

That's a nice demo, but we can't see what it would look like on our monitors, since it's magnified so much. Maybe you could show it magnified and unmagnified.

Done. You're lucky I'm bored!
Un-Magnified
Magnified

[elvis2000]

My only solution has been a monitor calibration, with strong gamma. Try that. But yes, font smoothing sucks -- especially on OSX.