Blurry AE UI?

[maryhawkins]

I thought there was something wrong with my iMac's monitor or my eyes, but my AfterEffects 2021 UI is actually the culprit. The whole UI is blurry, as if someone had chosen the wrong setting somewhere. I assumed I was that person who used the wrong settings, but I can't find anything in preferences to help. Here's a screenshot of "Preferences" from the header of my preferences, just to show how things look on my Retina 5K, 27" monitor. If you look closely at the text palette that I've screenshotted, you can see how all of the T icons are soft around all of the edges, and the 00s are blurry enough that you can see them melting into each other where they overlap. These details are about the same size as the smallest type on this help webpage, which is clean and crisp.

Any ideas? Anyone else seeing this? It makes it really hard to see details in the UI, and being able to see tiny type and little icons is very imporant when you're using a complex program like AfterEffects on a big monitor. I can lean in and see the pixelization on icons and text. My actual renders and compositions are fine.

[Jose Panadero]

In older versions of macOS you have a control about that in the System Preferences > General. There is something about font smoothing when it is available. Check if you have activated this option.

[maryhawkins]

I'm using BigSur, 11.2.3, and I don't see that in there. Sigh...

Illustrator and Photoshop are nice and crisp. It's something specific in AfterEffects.

[maryhawkins]

Here are screenshots from Photoshop and Illustrator from the same computer. Look at how clean the UI elements are compared to AE. All of the lines are clear, all of the type is crisp. The type and icons are a little bigger in AI and PS, but what's really noticable is how blurry everything is in AE. What gives?!

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

This is just a guess, but it’s all I can think of: If you go into the Finder, then go into the Applications folder, and select the Adobe After Effects application (not folder) icon, and then choose File > Get info, what is the state of the option highlighted in the figure below? It should normally be deselected.

[maryhawkins]

Oooh! That was it! The UI looks so much better now. I was worrying that my eyesight was failing or something. Thank you!