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Answered How do I draw a clean 1px line?

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      Monday, June 07, 2010 9:40 AM
       
       
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      I'm a bit of newbie to Expression Design, although I've some experience with similar packages such as Photoshop and Fireworks, and I'm having trouble with a really basic task. Every time I draw a straight line with a width of 1px in 'pixel preview' mode, it ends up straddling two pixels, with each side having a 50% opacity. This happens whether I have 'snap to pixels' set or not. How can I draw a proper 1px straight line?
       

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    • Tuesday, June 08, 2010 11:11 AM
       
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      The only way to eliminate antialias is through the export process. Fred is right. The best solution is to turn Pixel Preview off.
      Annie

      I often shout out loud about this problem - turning pixel view off is not the best idea because in the end and on the screen the pixels are back again. I always want the closest preview I can get. I solve this problem with pressing ctrl and 5 times the arrow key. This moves the line in subpixel steps to the middle of the pixel grid and the line is looking like it should. I know that is a hard hack and after my designer life I have rheumatism in my fingers.

      How do you eleminate antialias in the export process? This is only possible if you export to pixel pictures like png or jpg. I do software design and need the XAML code, I didn't find a solution for this problem. Maybe there is a great idea outside ;-)

       

      Best regards from Germany
      Thomas

      • Marked As Answer by Amtiskaw Wednesday, June 09, 2010 3:27 PM
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    • Monday, June 07, 2010 2:55 PM
       
       
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      This is normal.  The Pixel Preview mode will turn vectors into bitmaps and that's why it appears pixilated.  Suggest turning Pixel Preview off.

       

      ~Fred
       
    • Monday, June 07, 2010 8:30 PM
       
       
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      I know what it does, the point is that I want to draw a 1 pixel wide line that actually takes up 1 solid pixel of space, instead of being split across two.
       
    • Monday, June 07, 2010 9:55 PM
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      I see what you mean. In Pixel Preview mode it appears as 2 pixels wide when in reality it's only 1 pixel wide. The problem appears to be with the grid view. I notice that the grid spacing appears larger in pixel preview mode. Hewever, this isn't the only problem. Pixel preview adds antialiasing regardless of whether the object is a straight line. The only way to eliminate antialias is through the export process. Fred is right. The best solution is to turn Pixel Preview off.
      Annie
       
    • Tuesday, June 08, 2010 11:11 AM
       
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      The only way to eliminate antialias is through the export process. Fred is right. The best solution is to turn Pixel Preview off.
      Annie

      I often shout out loud about this problem - turning pixel view off is not the best idea because in the end and on the screen the pixels are back again. I always want the closest preview I can get. I solve this problem with pressing ctrl and 5 times the arrow key. This moves the line in subpixel steps to the middle of the pixel grid and the line is looking like it should. I know that is a hard hack and after my designer life I have rheumatism in my fingers.

      How do you eleminate antialias in the export process? This is only possible if you export to pixel pictures like png or jpg. I do software design and need the XAML code, I didn't find a solution for this problem. Maybe there is a great idea outside ;-)

       

      Best regards from Germany
      Thomas

      • Marked As Answer by Amtiskaw Wednesday, June 09, 2010 3:27 PM
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    • Wednesday, June 09, 2010 2:17 PM
       
       
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      But if I turn off anti-aliasing, then other shapes such as ellipses and curved lines are drawn jagged instead of smooth. I want the image to be anti-aliased, I just also want straight lines to be snapped correctly to pixels. Expression Design gets this right in other cases, for example if you draw a 1px rectangle, just no the most basic case available, that of drawing a single straight line. It seems the only solution is that given by Thomas Biedermann, using Ctrl+Arrow Keys to manually adjust the subpixel positioning of every line I draw.

      This is ludicrous. Drawing a straight line was the first thing I tried, about 5 seconds after launching the software, and Expression Design cannot do it properly!? Furthermore, I had a look on MS Connect and found a bug related to this problem was closed as 'By Design', without any explanation from Microsoft! This is seriously unimpressive for a piece of software that has just reached version 4.0.

       
    • Friday, June 11, 2010 9:28 AM
       
       
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      Hi Amtiskaw, great that you found this MS connect bug and for coming up with this. I always thought I might be silly cause no one else seem to have this problem. I know this doesn't help, but it is good for my mind. I will keep giving feedback to the Expression team related to this issue.