Why is my text blurry ?

motojedi

I'm creating a newsletter in PS Elements 2.0 and the text is either pixelated or blurry depending on wether I use the anti-aliasing or not.

What can I do to get the text to look nice and sharp ?

Mike Lane

motojedi wrote:

I'm creating a newsletter in PS Elements 2.0 and the text is either pixelated or blurry depending on wether I use the anti-aliasing or not.

What can I do to get the text to look nice and sharp ?

Elements works with raster images and text (ultimately) so the quality of your text will depend on the resolution (e.g. 72dpi, 150dpi, 300dpi, etc.) you have set for your particular project (which is why PS elements or even CS are not well suited to doing things like newsletters and such). If you have pixelated text my guess is that you probably have the resolution set too low. I'm not sure how to change the resolution in elements although I suspect it is like PS CS2 where you change the resolution in the same place that you change the image size.

Alternatively you could use a program that uses vector mapping to do your newsletter. Illustrator is one example (although if you don't have PS, my guess is you don't have illustrator either), Corel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, one of the Macromedia programs (fireworks?), etc.

Photos must be in raster (although there could be some fancy artistic reasons to convert an image to vector mapping I suppose but those images will not be photo-realistic)

Text and shapes are best in vector

motojedi

Thanks. I'll try turning up the resolution. PS elements works really well as far as layout of the newsletter. It makes it easy to combine text, photos, and headers as layers. I'm on a Mac and don't have any other programs suited for the task and I'm trying to avoid buying any. Thanks again.

colourbox

motojedi wrote:

Thanks. I'll try turning up the resolution. PS elements works really well as far as layout of the newsletter. It makes it easy to combine text, photos, and headers as layers. I'm on a Mac and don't have any other programs suited for the task and I'm trying to avoid buying any. Thanks again.

You can use TextEdit (included with your Mac) to lay out pages in RTF, making it a cheap version of Microsoft Word. You can add pictures, style text, etc. although I don't think you can do multicolumn layouts.

If you were to do it in Elements and you want small text to print sharp, you'd have to be working at least 150dpi, preferably 300 dpi. Your files could become huge. That's why people use proper page layout apps. If you can spare a few dollars, you might try Apple Pages (part of iWork). It's very basic, but for a newsletter it's far better than Elements or TextEdit.

motojedi

colourbox wrote:

You can use TextEdit (included with your Mac) to lay out pages in RTF, making it a cheap version of Microsoft Word. You can add pictures, style text, etc. although I don't think you can do multicolumn layouts.

If you were to do it in Elements and you want small text to print sharp, you'd have to be working at least 150dpi, preferably 300 dpi. Your files could become huge. That's why people use proper page layout apps. If you can spare a few dollars, you might try Apple Pages (part of iWork). It's very basic, but for a newsletter it's far better than Elements or TextEdit.

Thanks for mentioning that the files would become huge. I thought that might occur. I have an Apple store just around the corner from work. I think I'll go see what they suggest.