Hi Randall, On Sunday 12 February 2006 18:50, Randall R Schulz wrote:
Even then, it's a "sawtooth."
Not if it's one pixel wide and exactly 45 degrees off the x or y axis. :-)
A raster image can do no better.
That was my point, wasn't it? Even with anti-aliasing, when you zoom in close enough the "sawtooth" construction is visible. You can't avoid it because that effect, or characteristic, is inherent to the technology. Try 'zooming' your face right up to an HDTV display... at some point the pixel construction becomes visible and the "jaggies" appear.
The only alternative is to use a vector graphic representation
Wasn't that my recommendation?
... However a good tool for adding the overlays would be one that can do such overlay layers in vector format while accepting a raster image as the base or background layer. In other words, a hybrid drawing program.
What he needs is a professional grade vector drawing program that provides for the use of bitmaps as a "canvas" or "background." Illustrator has this capability. I don't know if it has been implemented in Inkscape, yet. If not, I'm sure it is on the drawing board (pun intended.) :-)
The good news is that PostScript and PDF can accommodate this kind of mixture of raster and vector graphics. The other good thing about PostScript-based representations is the fact that PostScript rendering engines usually are finely tuned to the characteristics of the output device and usually produce the best output possible for any given device.
Now *this* part of the solution didn't occur to me because Art is still trying to clear the first hurdle. When the artwork is appropriately 'married' to the bitmaps he'll want to print it out. I agree... Postscript is the obvious choice.
Vectors are not "less susceptible" to aliasing, they're immune to it.
Wrong. They can't be considered "immune" when the only available output devices are raster. See my HDTV comment, above.
It's only when you must rasterize the vector image that the inevitable degradation occurs, but because the image itself is represented by vectors, it will render at any resolution on any device in the best manner available for that output device.
I used a lot less words to say exactly the same thing: "Vectors scale and are much less susceptible to "jaggies" " :-) Carl