Faking an Anti-Aliased Preview

You've seen it in Flash, and if you use Illustrator you've seen it in the latest version. It's called Anti-Aliased View. If you haven't seen it, it's when the edges of your objects look smooth on-screen and don't look jagged.

There has been a long controversy over it's usefulness in FreeHand and if it should be made available in the future. Well there has been a pretty strong demand for it in both the FreeHand Newsgroups and the FreeHand e-mail list. Below is how to get a quick fix if you have the need to see the art in anti-aliased view.

Version: 7-8 (FreeHand 9 and above now has a Flash Anti-alias view mode)

Tip idea provided by: Judy Arndt
Content written by Ian Kelleigh

Above is a little cartoon I drew up of my cats, Felix and Simon. They contain basic fills and lines. Nothing too fancy. But I want to see them without all the jagged lines that are a common sight in FreeHand. Note: There was another reason I drew these guys up. They are hidden somewhere in this site. Can you find them? ;-)

Faking anti-aliased view is really quite easy and fast to do in FreeHand. First I set my magnification to 100%, and I select the art I want to preview. Then in the Modify menu, choose Rasterize (FreeHand 8) or in the Xtras menu -> Create -> PICT image (FreeHand 7 and 8). FreeHand 8 users have it easy, because they can assign the Rasterize operation a custom key command. Mine is set up to be Command+Option+Shift+Z. In the Rasterize operation, choose 72 dpi and set Anti-aliasing at 2.

When I hit OK in the Rasterize dialog, the objects will now become a bitmap image that is fully anti-aliased like shown above. Ah yes, my life is complete now that the edges don't look so harsh.... heh heh. After I'm finished previewing the file, I simply do an Undo (Command (Control)+Z) and my original art is back.

For users who prefer to use the Create PICT image method, you can simply hit the Copy button. So instead of actually replacing your art with a rasterized version, you simply have to Paste the anti-aliased version in.

So that's how you can get a quick Anti-Aliased view in FreeHand. Like I said before, it can be pretty fast if you have custom key commands set for Rasterize, especially if it's similar to Undo. Then you barely have to change your fingers around, heh heh. Just remember to set your magnification to 100% first and don't try to preview too much at once. If you have a slow computer, it may take a while to rasterize the art.

This will give you pretty accurate results for many special effects, like blends or dashed lines too. But it will NOT show you any special custom fills or lines that use PostScript code.