anti-aliasing
anti-aliasing
(graphics)The most common example is black characters on a whitebackground. Without anti-aliasing, diagonal edges appearjagged, like staircases, which may be noticeable on a lowresolution display. If the display can show intermediategreys then anti-aliasing can be applied. A pixel will beblack if it is completely within the black area, or white ifit is completely outside the black area, or an intermediateshade of grey according to the proportions of it which overlapthe black and white areas. The technique works similarly withother foreground and background colours.
"Aliasing" refers to the fact that many points (which woulddiffer in the real image) are mapped or "aliased" to the samepixel (with a single value) in the digital representation.
anti-aliasing
(1) Smoothing the jagged appearance of diagonal lines in a bitmapped image. The pixels that surround the edges of the line are changed to varying shades of gray or color in order to blend the sharp edge into the background. This technique is also called "dithering," but is usually known as anti-aliasing when applied to diagonal and curved lines.(2) Smoothing a distorted signal by applying various techniques that add data or filter out unwanted noise.
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| This teapot from the University of Utah was a famous first example of anti-aliasing applied to images. (Images courtesy of Computer Sciences Department, University of Utah.) |
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| Anti-aliasing |
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| This teapot from the University of Utah was a famous first example of anti-aliasing applied to images. (Images courtesy of Computer Sciences Department, University of Utah.) |