(DE/EN) Text rendering bug or incorrect display of character positions.

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

(The English text below, machine-translated)

DE: Hallo, ich habe ein Problem mit Illustrator, das aber auch andere Adobe-Programme wie InDesign und Photoshop betrifft. Es scheint ein allgemeines Adobe-Problem auf Windows-Geräten zu sein, und zwar:

Textzeichen werden beim Verändern der Laufweite, z. B. durch Kerning (siehe Video), nicht korrekt dargestellt. Die Zeichen verschieben sich rein faktisch korrekt (getestet mit dem Info-Panel), die visuelle  Anzeige auf dem Monitor ist jedoch fehlerhaft. Dadurch ist professionelles Arbeiten ausgeschlossen. Wahrscheinlich handelt es sich um ein Problem mit dem Text-Rendering, also der Display-Anzeige.

Dieser Fehler tritt übrigens nur in Adobe-Programmen auf. Alternative Grafikprogramme wie Affinity haben dieses Anzeigeproblem nicht.

Außerdem ist es kein individuelles Problem, das speziell mein Setup betrifft – auch andere Nutzer haben dieses Problem. Dazu ein weiterer Forum-Beitrag von mir, speziell für InDesign.

Bisherige Lösungsversuche:

• Ältere Versionen der Programme Installiert (bis Versionen von 2023)

• Getestet auf verschiedenen Geräten (Windows 10 und Windows 11)
• Getestet mit dedezierter GPU (AMD 6650 XT) und GPU der CPU (Intel 12400 und i5-7200U)
• Gestetet mit verschiedenen Auflösungen: 16:9 FHD, WQHD und 16:10 (WUXGA)
• Getestet mit 60Hz, 75Hz und 120Hz
• Getestet mit verschiedenen Schriften (Systemschriften, Cloudschriften etc.)
• Deaktivierung von Windows ClearType
• Deaktivierung OpenType-Funktionen
• Programme auf Standardeinstellungen zurückgesetzt
• Programme sauber deinstalliert und neu installiert
• Programme als Administrator ausgeführt
• Diverse Adobe-Programeinstellungen bezüglich der Anzeigeleistung/Qualität
• Windows GPU-Einstellung auf Höchstleistung gestellt 
• Diverse Optionen der AMD Adrenalinsoftware getestet
• Einige Dinge mehr ....

Ich habe bei der Recherche nur einen(!) Windows-Nutzer gefunden, der dieses Problem nicht hat. Ggf. wegen der GPU von Nvidia bzw. der Software dazu.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EN: Hello, I have an issue with Illustrator that also affects other Adobe programs such as InDesign and Photoshop. It seems to be a general Adobe problem on Windows devices:

Text characters are not displayed correctly when adjusting tracking or kerning (see video). While the characters are factually repositioned correctly (tested with the Info panel), the visual display on the monitor is incorrect. This makes professional work impossible. It is likely a text rendering issue, specifically related to display rendering. This error occurs only in Adobe programs. Alternative graphic design software like Affinity does not have this display issue. Additionally, this is not an individual issue specific to my setup – other users are experiencing the same problem. Here is another forum post from me, specifically about InDesign.

Previous troubleshooting attempts:

• Installed older versions of the programs (going back to 2023 versions)
• Tested on different devices (Windows 10 and Windows 11)
• Tested with a dedicated GPU (AMD 6650 XT) and integrated GPU (Intel 12400 and i5-7200U)
• Tested with different resolutions: 16:9 FHD, WQHD, and 16:10 (WUXGA)
• Tested with refresh rates of 60Hz, 75Hz, and 120Hz
• Tested with various fonts (system fonts, cloud fonts, etc.)
• Disabled Windows ClearType
• Disabled OpenType features
• Reset programs to default settings
• Cleanly uninstalled and reinstalled programs
• Ran programs as administrator
• Adjusted various Adobe program settings related to display performance/quality
• Set Windows GPU settings to high performance
• Tested various options in AMD Adrenalin software
• And several other troubleshooting steps...

During my research, I found only one(!) Windows user who does not have this issue—possibly due to using an Nvidia GPU or related software.

[Anubhav M]

Hello @Holger Walter34008837xo0j,

Thanks for sharing the details. I have forwarded these to the product team, and they are currently investigating it. I will update this thread as I have more info.

Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Anubhav

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

Oh, great, thank you so much. I really didn’t expect that anymore. 🙂

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

To be honest, I'm increasingly irritated and disappointed. After further research, I found that the text rendering issue has been present on Windows for many years. Does Adobe simply not care about Windows users? At least not in the professional field? So I guess nothing will change ...

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

This not a bug per se... it's actually in the category of "how things work".

This is a font cache issue and is purely a display artifact. You will see it more prominent or less prominent depending on the resolution of your screen, and your current view percentage.

Once a character of a font is rendered for the screen, each is stored as a bitmap in the cache for a particular size and orientation, and reused each time to speed up display avoiding having to render them again. Especially on pages with lots of text, not having to re-render each character saves time in redrawing the screen. However, because the bitmaps are already rendered, they can only be placed according to the pixel grid of your screen at that view, and will "snap" to the next available pixel column based on its position. When you kern like you wwre doing, you are moving the characters ever so slightly, but oOnce it gets past the half-way of a pixel's distance away, it snaps to the next available pixel position. And since each letter is defined with a slightly different starting position, the "snapping" will happen randomly as required in a line of text. The more you zoom in, or if you have a high-pitch monitor like a Mac's Retina screen, the less you will see this issue, or if you use a high-pitch display. This does NOT affect output, although the same thing technically happens on a high-resolution output device, but at such a high resolution that a one-pixel difference will not matter.

The font cache approcah has been in use since the very beginning and is the basis of PostScript printing

Other programs may not use a similar font cache approach, especially at certain type sizes and resolutions. The sample you saw with much smaller type and very low-resolution is rendering each character repeatedly and anti-aliasing them on the fly, probably since there is not much overhead there and it become beneficial to do it that way.

[Bobby Henderson]

How much does font hinting play into the equation with modern computer systems and monitors? I remember hinting being really important 20+ years ago when most people were using CRT monitors with modest resolution levels, like 1024 X 768. Some commercial type companies put a lot of work into the hinting data they would embed in font files. I wonder how much of that is still done with modern commercial OpenType fonts.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Hinting is very much still a thing, and very much still included in fonts, but it's intent is really targeted to improve printed output of smaller fonts on, say, a laserwriter. Because of the way laser toner is applied, it can make a character look fatter than it should at those sizes, so hinting helps counteract that by making the character a bit thinner. It does come into play on the screen as well, but with anti-aliasing it's not as dramatic. Of course, on high-resolution devices, it's not really necessary.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

Here is what 12 pt Myriad would look like on a 300dpi laserwriter, hinted above and non-hinted below:

 

[Monika Gause]

It is important for all the fonts that are intended for use on devices that are not desktop computers, such as industrial stuff, car interfaces or the like. 

[Bobby Henderson]

Variable fonts are a new factor to add into this. A few of them include optical axes to improve print output at small sizes. Helvetica Now has three basic optical styles: display, text and micro. Not only is the tracking different, but the glyphs themselves are noticeably different in appearance. Monotype first released a regular "static" version of Helvetica Now in 2019 and then released a variable version a couple years later. The variable version added a width axis which added a lot of new compressed and condensed style capability.

The micro range in Helvetica Now has things like ink traps built into the glyphs. The style in some glyphs like "R" changes noticeably, making it look more like a glyph from Arial rather than Helvetica. I've never liked Arial for various reasons, one of which being I think it's an objectively ugly sans typeface. It's a Frankenstein's Monster of different typefaces jumbled together to match the metrics of Helvetica. Glyphs like "C" or "S" are not graceful; they almost look crooked. But Arial is a typeface that was designed for use in personal computers when the industry was still in its infancy and monitors were small and low in resolution. I didn't mind looking at Arial styled on body copy displayed on a small computer monitor running Windows 3.1. But the lettering didn't look so good when its vector shapes were blown up big and cut out of vinyl or routed out of aluminum. In the past I merely thought someone had some bad type design choices when they created Arial. But seeing the text and micro glyphs in Helvetica Now made me realize people at Monotype had some practical reasons for making Arial ugly.

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I understand it technically now. But why hasn’t this been improved? Other programs can handle this,  and they don’t charge ~€60 a month ... I need to see exactly where a character is positioned. I always thought Adobe was made for professionals.

[Monika Gause]

If you need that amount of precision, you need to print it. A printer or even a RIP will always have so much more precision that you cannot compare it to the monitor display.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"But why hasn’t this been improved? "

Until monitors are displaying the same resolution as an ouput device (not gonna happen anytime soon), this is what IS possible. There are only so many pixels on a monitor to play with, so on a typical 96-pitch monitor, you can only position the characters every 1/96"... kerning anywhere inbetween will pop left or right one full pixel once it passes the half-way point.

It should be noted that you are incorrect in saying it's just an Adobe issue. I can tell you for a fact that all other programs do it as well. Quark, Word, even a simple Text Editor, does exactly the same thing when trying to precsisely move text in amounts less than the pixel density.

If you want to see more precision, you must zoom in.

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

Hey Bard and Monika,

thanks anyway for your input, everyone. I’m just really frustrated right now, and I definitely don’t want to end up buying a Mac because of this.

Idon’t have any issues with any of the Serif (Affinity) programs, and everything looks fine in Word (2019) as well. But when it comes to Adobe: how am I supposed to place characters properly like this? It’s just not possible. It’s not only about print—kerning needs to look right in digital formats too. And I’m not going to print out 100 pages just to fine-tune the kerning for digital applications... sometimes even just the crossbar of a letter shifts while the stem stays in place.

I’m currently trying to fix the issue using the AMD GPU software, but it’s not working. I wonder if Nvidia can handle it—they're always advertising their compatibility with Adobe.

[Bobby Henderson]

When you say other programs can handle text display better than Illustrator, which applications are you talking about? In the case of CorelDRAW or Affinity Designer, I can't say either one of those is doing a noticeably better job than Illustrator. I use a Dell desktop PC at work with a couple of 1080p monitors; I have a 17" Alienware notebook at home with a 120Hz UHD screen. Illustrator looks just fine on both systems; I usually use the GPU Preview mode in Illustrator. The display on the Alienware notebook allows me to use animated zoom in outline view, which is really nice. I wish animated zoom was available in outline view on any monitor; I don't understand why it is confined to displays above 2000px wide. 

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

It’s not about things looking pretty, it’s about the correct positioning of characters. The kerning changes depending on the zoom level, and characters "randomly" jump around. That might have been normal 20 years ago, but today there are definitely better ways to handle it, as other developers have proven. 😕

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm not seeing those problems on my end. I mostly design signs and other large format graphics; if Illustrator was shifting letter tracking and kerning out of kilter I would see the difference amplified greatly in the end results of my work. Granted, I'll go in and micro-adjust spacing between letters. But there are many cases where I'm able to go with a font's default tracking settings (especially if I'm using a really well crafted font file). I just don't see any difference how Illustrator is handling a font's built-in tracking and spacing versus that of other rival graphics applications.

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

Hi, which GPU are you using? I suspect that Nvidia overrides Adobe’s tech, whereas AMD and Intel GPU Softwares don’t.

[Bobby Henderson]

My work desktop and notebook have NVidia GPUs. Aside from that, I've used Adobe Illustrator for many years and have used certain other graphics applications for many years as well. My experience of viewing type on computer screens through all that time, and on several different computer systems, aligns with what Brad described earlier.

[Holger Walter34008837xo0j]

Interesting. Does the behavior happen to change negatively when the NVIDIA software is terminated? I know another Windows user who doesn't have the display issue and also uses an NVIDIA GPU. Other Windows users who use AMD or Intel GPUs have all experienced the negative behavior with the "jumps letters" so far.

[Bobby Henderson]

looking; that difference is more noticeable on a lower resolution 1080p monitor than the 3840x2160 17" panel on my notebook. The type display on the notebook is so sharp in resolution it almost looks like a printed page. I would have to be using a significantly lower resolution setting to see obviously mistakes in how the computer places pixels to define the edges of letters.

Are you using any odd percentage levels in zoom view? I wouldn't think this should matter much in a vector-based graphics application like Illustrator as it does in pixel-based image editors like Photoshop.