iBooks and fuzzy text?

[John F]

I've been using my iPad a little for reading, and the text looks "fuzzy" whenever I start reading. I think this is due to font technology. I eventually get used to it, but whenever I initially pick it up, it bothers me. For example, the letter "i" looks very distracting: it looks like a black line sandwiched between two grey lines, which appears very fuzzy to me.

Do all the reading apps have the same text rendering, i.e. at the same font at the same point size will look the same in ReadMe as in iBooks?

Thanks.

[ylsul]

I haven't noticed that in iBooks. I do notice it with pdf files, however. Sometimes I have to do a slight resize pinch to get the letters to render crisply.

My guess is that the rendering engine is the same, but don't quote me.

[The-eBook-Reader]

I agree. That was a big problem for me at first being so used to E Ink. The text grays at the edges and looks fuzzy because of the pixels, unlike with E Ink where the text is all uniformly the same color.

My problem was that I was holding the iPad too close. The farther away it is the better the text looks, and now I read with it on my lap at arms length away so I can't see the pixelization of the text.

I've tried the various reading apps and I seem to notice it more in iBooks because of the spindly fonts; they need to be bolder IMO. It doesn't seem as bad with the Kindle app because its font is better but it's still noticeable--the pixels are kind of large on the iPad and there's nothing to do about that. Resolution, man. Resolution.

I'm surprised that more people haven't brought this topic up.

[JSWolf]

The problem with iBooks is that some of the fonts Apple chose are awful. Only Garamond and Time new Roman are anywhere half decent.

[leebase]

I haven't noticed, but then I read with a fairly large font size.

Lee

Originally Posted by The-eBook-Reader

...unlike with E Ink where the text is all uniformly the same color....

e-Ink readers are actually grayscale. Some have only 4 levels of grayscale (or less) and some have up to 16 levels. (There might be some with more levels.) My guess is that e-Ink screens have a better combination of dpi (dots per inch) and space between dots. Too much space between dots and text will look ragged.

An oddity with many color screens is that black text is rendered not in grays alone but also using colors. If you do a screen capture on your PC or Mac of a page of text, then zoom in (don't rescale just zoom in) to a portion of that text in Photoshop you will see some random color pixels which really don't seem to belong. That can cause your eyes and brain to incorrectly interpolate the text and make it seem fuzzy. If you then convert the text image to grayscale it seems easier to read. Too bad reader apps made for color screens don't have a "render in true grayscale" option.

Here is an example randomly captured from the CNN website and shown on top at 100% scale and at bottom at 400% scale. On the right you can see the colored pixels used to render a black text. This was captured from a PC LCD monitor so the iPad might look different. On the left the text was converted to grayscale mode.

...

[rfog]

Originally Posted by The-eBook-Reader

I'm surprised that more people haven't brought this topic up.

I've talked a lot about that in my blog and in other places (in Spanish). I think it is a problem of all Apple devices. My iMAC has de same odd fonts. And it is Apple fonts because under Fusion I can see the perfect Microsoft ClearType surrounded by the crispy and dotted MAC fonts.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with iBooks is that some of the fonts Apple chose are awful. Only Garamond and Time new Roman are anywhere half decent.

I didn't see Garamound in iBooks. Is it available in iBooks?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

I didn't see Garamound in iBooks. Is it available in iBooks?

My mistake. It's actually Palatino.