Why does white font look fatter on black background?

[keviny62737227]

Why does white font look fatter on black background?

Can someone please help me this is making my brain hurt.

[Monika Gause]

Is this a theoretical question?

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Could you post screenshots to illustrate the issue?

[keviny62737227]

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Personally the fonts don’t seem differently bold to me.

[jane-e]

I agree. They look the same to me.

[John Mensinger]

There is a very slight difference to my eye. I would attribute it to the fact that we are viewing them on back-lighted display devices. White light (white monitor pixels) "spreads" and encroaches slightly on our perception of the black characters on a white background. Conversely, the white characters on black background fatten with the perceived spread. This same phenomenon also effectively makes the hinting work inversely. It tends to be much less evident in non-back-lighted print.

[jane-e]

Hi Kevin,

Does the white typeface have a white stroke? That would make it look “fatter” on a colored background.

Show your Appearance panel with your text selected if you don’t see it.

Jane

[keviny62737227]

thank you for the reply. no the stroke is off.

[meganchi]

I believe this is an optical illusion. Take that same white font and place it over a lighter colored box. This should illustrate that the font is actually the same width.

[Philippe30475439ttqn]

It always does, it's optical illustion. Some brands actually adjust the weight of their logomark to accomodate for that.