DITHERSMOOTHING : a demonstration and discussion

[Helm]

I've been pondering the benefits of this for a while. I'm looking for opinions. I know that first of all, one is almost never stranded for colors to such a degree in most of the pixel art we do that he'd fake aa with dithering. But what if you are, somehow, that limited? Nice skill to have. Second issue, I know this works on either bigger resolutions at 1x zoom, or screens without sharp fidelity, like TV screens best. Lastly, this creates more 'hairy' texture than one might need at a given time. Still, an interesting concept to keep in mind.

EDIT: also there are possible applications in subpixel curving.

[ptoing]

On PAL and I think NTSC TVs it would only work horizontally. Bleed usually is much bigger horizontally. On C64 hires something like aaababbb becomes aaabbccc. New inbetween colour, but the vertical ones like in your first image would be still showing clearly, but work to a certain extend anyway. It's more of a visual "breaking up the line" thing than aa in that case which makes stuff look smoother.

In the very least it's a thing that can be kept in mind and be used for effect if you wanna do something more organic looking.

[Ai]

Adjustment:


Changing the alignment of a few pixels makes the line less spiny, and should have little effect on how it displays on a TV screen.

I've used this techique for a while myself, though usually I had cooperative enough colors to minimize dither invasiveness.

[Blick]

I used the technique a while back, but thought it made the aa look a bit choppy on a CRT. Probably looks smoother on LCDs. It's strange, because I noticed today that you used it on your avatar, Helm, and was wondering if it really helped with smoothing the image because when I did it I didn't really know if it worked or not, I just figured it would in theory and didn't bother to test it both ways.

[Xion]

I've done that before, but only with color-limited still scenes. Pretty much ditto what Blick said: "when I did it I didn't really know if it worked or not, I just figured it would in theory and didn't bother to test it both ways."

[Rydin]

I've thought about using it a few times here and there, but I've never found myself in a situation where I couldn't just grab another color or grey from the palette to use for aa.  I'd be interested in seeing this used on a large piece for the "hairy" texture effect you described, though.

[.TakaM]

I've used it a few times.. where long stretches of AA is needed I think 'dithersmoothing' is the way to go

below is an example of how I'd dither my AA, next to standard aa

made a verticle and horizontal example, because I think the verticle one looks better

[Xion]

Indeed, on my moniter the ditherAA looks better.

[Sherman Gill]

Indeed, on my moniter the ditherAA looks better.

Indeed.

[Helm]

Yeah, good application. So there we have it, I guess.