Layer effect anti-aliasing issue

[Herbert123]

anti-aliasing_issue.png

When Special Emboss is applied in this example the anti-aliasing is rather problematic in the left top edge area. Applying a dark glow inside effect exacerbates the issue, resulting in too obvious aliased edges.

Ideally the anti-aliasing would be much less aliased looking

I've attached a demo file.

[der_fotograf]

How does it look in print?

[Herbert123]

I am unsure, but seeing print ink is more forgiving for these type of artefacts: probably not as bad.

That said, I mainly work on screen graphics nowadays. And this is quite visible.

[shijan]

Well Herbert123, as it was confirmed by developers - Layer Styles (and i guess Light as a part of Layer Styles system) are raster-based and 8 bit only. In pair with low resolution image source this produce Banding and seems also edge Aliasing artifacts. 8 bit is just not precise enough for this sort of effects.
You may try to use higher resolution source, apply Style and then downscale final baked raster. But larger image will produce more banding
You may also adjust "Emboss - Border From" curve to give it more pixels on the edge.

[shijan]

This checkbox seems may improve things a little bit:

[shijan]

And as expected worst case scenario is to use monochrome gradient. All artifacts became even more amplified when limited to 256 monochrome shades.
Adjusting source size and snapping it to pixel grid also don't fix edge artiafact.

[shijan]

And seems source of the problem - too extreme curve shape of Light source 2

[Herbert123]

Thanks! I never bothered looking at the secondary light curves. It works much better now.

Still, it would great if the anti-aliasing wouldn't be affected that much by a lighting curve. Perhaps something for the devs to look into.

That said, the adjusted curve in combination with a slight Median filter applied yields a good result.

ex02.png