Disabling anti-aliasing in production files

Anti-aliasing is a technique used in computer bitmap (raster) graphics to minimize the jagged or stairstep-like look you get when you view a graphic on screen. It’s fair to say that it is produced 100% for the pleasure of the human eye.

However, anti-aliasing can have some side effects you should be aware of.

From a few to MANY colors

The stairstep-like effect created when exporting a bitmap (raster) without anti-aliasing effect on is simply caused by the fact that each bitmap pixel is square, and for a line to take a certain shape or bath it needs to ‘step’ from one pixel row to another:

To soften this ‘stepping’ effect, anti-aliasing blurs the two joining colors (in this case the red triangle and the yellow background) in an attempt to soften the stepping effect:

 

A side effect of this anti-aliasing blurring effect is the introduction of many of new colors. No longer is the image merely a solid red and solid yellow, but also is many shades of red, orange and yellow in between because of the newly introduced colors. As you can see it went from two solid colors to 165 unique colors:

 

The side effect for printers

The blurring effect also happens to objects with a transparent background which can have some very undesirable effects for printers, such as DTG printers.

The blurry pixel edges create semi-transparent pixels. When printing on a dark garment and using a white base, sometimes the system prints a light mist of white ink under these semi-transparent pixels which create a white halo effect next to the object:

However, without the anti-aliasing effect some inner-design objects, especially lines, can logged jagged. The ideal is to use anti-aliasing on inside objects, but not on the outer objects that contain a transparent background.

A new setting in DecoNetwork 7.505.

In DecoNetwork 7.505 we have a new setting that allows you to set exactly how you want your anti-aliasing to work for production files.

To set this option:

• Log into your DecoNetwork website
• Browse to Admin > Decoration Processes and choose a process such as DTG Printing
• Select Production Settings
• Scroll down to Vector antialiasing (smoothing) mode and select from the following options:

1. No antialiasing: Do not apply any antialiasing to the production file
2. Full antialiasing: Apply antialiasing to all objects including edge objects with a transparent background in the production file
3. No antialiasing on transparent edges: Apply antialiasing to all objects EXCLUDING the object edges that sit on a transparent background (idea for printing on dark garments)

• Make your choice and click Save to save your changes.

 

 

 

from DecoNetwork Blog https://www.deconetwork.com/blog/disabling-anti-aliasing-in-production-files/

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