Howdy all,

I have read and implemented the help suggestion material on anti-aliasing.  My dilema is that when I have anti-alias off I have good fill but jagged lines, with anti-alias on, of course, smooth line and bad fill.

How can I get both?

The first board I created, 'AA matchup Stalingrad' has anti-alias but I wanted to improve the fill quality on my next endeavor.

I am using Corel Pain Shop Pro to create the .PNG

Help would be most appreciated. 

Dual-layer.

If you're using Corel, you might be able to make a vector image and get the best of both worlds.  It'll have to be converted before you use it, but you might have more luck. 

Otherwise, +1 for dual Layer. 

I will give vector images a try but the shapes may be too complicated for that.

I am already using dual layers, how will that help with the issue?  Using anti-alias on the fill layer and a smooth line on the board image?

SquintGnome wrote:

I am already using dual layers, how will that help with the issue?  Using anti-alias on the fill layer and a smooth line on the board image?

Yes

Well, you turn anti-alias off for the fill image. You can do whatever you want that looks good on the board image, which will generally involve anti-aliased lines that blend into transparency so they look smoother.

ok, sounds good, i will give it a shot, thanks 

You will just have to be careful of small territories or some areas that may affect the Player Colors too much.  You won't want Purple to look Purple on one territory but Pink an another.

Yes, usually better to just be grey scale on the semi-transparent parts of the board image.

Plus, having really crisp holes and "Too big" fill shapes gives a nice solid color in both players.

It is working well, thank you all!

How does turning anti-alias off improve the fill image (sorry in advance for the dumb question)?

Those little pixellated white spots around the inside of the territories come from player filling in the fully transparent pixels, but not filling the partially transparent pixels. 

When you alias in a photo editing program, it edits the pixel you change, but also changes color information from the surrounding pixels in order to make your image look smooth and less 8-bit. You turn that off, and the image editing program will change only the pixels you have selected. This makes for crisp transparencies, good - full - fills in player and not so smooth lines and stuff. 

Example: 

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/209383

The fills in this game are good, and complete, and have no white spots around the edges. 

And it turns out I can't find a good example of what it looks like otherwise.... 

http://www.wargear.net/help/display/Anti-Aliasing

This is kinda a good example of some filling, although it's usually less conttinuous, and more spotty - sorta.

Excellent explanation. Thanks Ratsy.