Anti-Alazing in FFXI.. how to get it to work? or Simulate it

[RosalynSable]

You say potato I say potato. Huh. I guess that phrase doesn't work when typed. But either way, it's essentially the same thing. At least according to the images that Wikipedia uses for examples.

[Tahngarthor]

Its not potato/potato. The difference is jpg compression artifacts do al ot more than just blur edges. they just make the whole image look bad for the sake of reducing file size. A properly antialiased image will actually take up more space than a compressed jpg.

My advice to you is to save as a bitmap and then use another program to convert it to the desired format. Photoshop for instance lets you control how much compression is used on JPGs, and thus if you dont mind a larger file you can get rid of most of the compression artifacting.

[aislinbluemage]

Anti-aliasing is a specific graphics algorithm that intentionally smooths jagged edges out by using a series of progressively transparent alpha layers.

The fuzzies that you're seeing on JPEGs is in fact compression artifacts, in which color information is being removed to reduce the file size. PNG files do not do this because PNG is a lossless compression format, while JPEG is a "lossy" format.

It's essentially the graphics analogue to the lossless FLAC and the lossy MP3.

Edit: With broadband connections being so prolific these days and the rate at which available bandwidth continues to increase, there's very little reason to use JPEG over PNG anymore, unless it's a really large (physical size) image.

[Tahngarthor]

PNG is also a web standard, whereas JPEG technically is not, just like GIF.

[The Mysterious X]

They do. Cause I use them

I tested it on my 8800 GT just before I made my post; setting the overlay to be the same as the background in the registry and just manipulating the AA setting in the nVidia control panel did nothing.
Advice on actually getting it to work would be appreciated

These are my settings, hopefully they'll be of some use to you. Could be an issue with the 8800GT, I remember NVIDIA once made a version of the 8xxx drivers specifically for FFXI. Other than that, idk what to suggest.

[atalantia]

Edit: With broadband connections being so prolific these days and the rate at which available bandwidth continues to increase, there's very little reason to use JPEG over PNG anymore, unless it's a really large (physical size) image.

Before the creation of .PNG (and early on .PNG was not that great to work with, it wasn't a good format until about 2002 or 2003), the rule of thumb was simple -- for photos, use .JPG. For things like drawings, comics, and things with vector graphics, .GIF is better.

I had someone build a website once where they converted all of the photos to .GIF. It looked horrible. The reverse is true too, saving what should be a .GIF as a .JPG will not produce good results. PNG is a good idiot button. You can usually save anything as a .PNG (excluding animated gifs, which 99% of the time just shouldn't exist) with acceptable results.

JPEG -- Joint Photographic Expert Group -- is still better for producing photographs than PNG. But if your only goal is to post to the web, I've found that PNG produces a nice enough image, especially with FireFox (although file sizes are larger). Lets face it, if JPEG can do this with a smaller file than a .PNG, why fill up your memory card any faster than you have to?

[Ganiman]

PNG is also a web standard, whereas JPEG technically is not, just like GIF.

Well, it means Portable Network Graphic - so yeah, it's supposed to be the standard. It only took Internet Explorer 8 or 9 versions to figure out how to display them correctly.

[atalantia]

I think the problems w/ IE and PNGs were if you had transparency. I think IE had problems w/ transparency and .gifs too for a while, but this may have been fixed in IE 6.

If you didn't have transparency as an alpha level, it all worked.

[aislinbluemage]

JPEG -- Joint Photographic Expert Group -- is still better for producing photographs than PNG. But if your only goal is to post to the web, I've found that PNG produces a nice enough image, especially with FireFox (although file sizes are larger). Lets face it, if JPEG can do this with a smaller file than a .PNG, why fill up your memory card any faster than you have to?

No. Just... no.

A lossy compression algorithm can never be better than a lossless compression algorithm. One removes data that the compression algorithm deems we cannot notice due to the rounding effect our minds produce. Our brains "fill in the gaps" but things still look or sound... off.

Lossless compression algorithms, however, remove no data. They generally just change the way the data is stored and remove the "gaps" of empty data.

Less data will always be worse than the complete data.

[atalantia]

No. Just... no.

A lossy compression algorithm can never be better than a lossless compression algorithm. One removes data that the compression algorithm deems we cannot notice due to the rounding effect our minds produce. Our brains "fill in the gaps" but things still look or sound... off.

Lossless compression algorithms, however, remove no data. They generally just change the way the data is stored and remove the "gaps" of empty data.

Less data will always be worse than the complete data.

Didn't look at my link did ya. The guy I referenced shoots JPEG for a living. He knows his stuff.

A JPEG, done right, will look the same as a PNG for photographs (but NOT for text or cartoons or things like that). And by the same, I mean that even a professional will have trouble telling the difference until you zoom in to a pointlessly high zoom. If you really wanted to go crazy, you could go for RAW or shoot TIFF. But a TIFF file is huge and generally is less versitile than a RAW (as is the case for the Nikon NEF, where my D70 produces a 5 MB NEF and ViewNX produces a 15 MB TIFF). But even the TIFF throws data out to produce a larger file.

See this link for a comparison of RAW vs JPEG -- http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d200/q ... ttings.htm

A JPEG at 'Fine' level is either lossless or near lossless. A Photoshop created JPEG at quality 12 is lossless. A Photoshop 3-4 is good enough for the web. Modern professional cameras can produce a lossless JPEG. Not that it is needed.

My current camera can take 1.6K photos on an 8 GB card at the highest quality. When I drop down to the lowest quality, I can take 4.8K. If this quality is 'good enough', and I might be in a situation where I need to take 2K+ photos before I can off load them, then this 'good enough' quality becomes the better one. Besides, larger files start to get in the way. If you double the file size, you double the number of CD/DVDs and hard drive backups you need. Also, running out of space on the cards is not a good option. Is it better to take a small quality hit that no one will notice or miss a good shot because you were worried about something that can be fixed with 3 clicks in photoshop later.

An example. I took this photo a few weeks ago. Original was RAW and I made 3 versions of it, a PNG, a JPG at Photoshop 12 quality, and a JPG at Photoshop 5 quality. In that order.


PNG lossless, 301K


JPG lossless, Quality 12, 136K


JPG Quality 5, 31K

I'll give you that the bottom JPEG version does not look as good and artifacts are present. But no one would say that the top JPEG doesn't look good. The airplane is a few shades redder in the PNG than the JPEG, but it is otherwise the same. The actual Photoshop version falls somewhere between the two versions, so I'm saying they both reproduce what I am going for equally. Since there would be color correction made before printing, I believe that both sources would come out the same. The bottom image is fine for web use, and is about 11% of the file size of the PNG. The interlaced PNG version I made is 362K for some odd reason. Paint.NET produces a 500K file doing an open and save-as on the first .PNG. In addition to the larger file size, compressed PNG images require additional CPU cycles to process. But this is not nearly as much of a concern anymore.

One of the first things I learned in photography that you always need to know what you are using and why. There is always a tradeoff.

Another quick example -- 62K file, although some of my highlights are blown.