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What Anti-aliasing Is | ||||
 
To explain this will require a little theory.
(Don't worry, I'll leave the math out of it.)
Converting a continuous object like a
fractal or a picture into a computer image
involves a process called sampling,
where each point in the computer image (a
pixel) is made from a sample of
the original, infinitely-detailed object.
This sample represents the color of the object
at that precise point.
The problem is what happens when you have details in the image you're trying to sample that are smaller than the space between your samples. You can't accurately represent those details in your sampled image. As an example, let's use a checkerboard pattern. The image at right shows five different checkerboards. The largest checkerboard has squares that are 17 pixels on a side; each following checkerboard has smaller and smaller squares. The last two have squares that are just over 1 pixel, and just over half a pixel. Notice how when the squares are just bigger than one pixel, an extra "pattern" is visible, and when the squares are much smaller than a pixel, the sampling process messes up completely and the squares actually look bigger! This is known as aliasing—where elements (the small squares) with frequencies too high to be shown in the sampling grid are misrepresented instead as elements of lower frequency that can be displayed (the bigger squares you see in the last checkerboard). Anti-aliasing is the process of eliminating the aliasing. |  | |||
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How Anti-Aliasing WorksThe basic idea behind most anti-aliasing techniques is to use more samples than you really need, and mix the results together. In our checkerboard example, this would be like sampling our checkerboard, not once per pixel, but four or sixteen times, with each sample coming from a slightly different location within the pixel. Once all the extra samples are taken, they are averaged together and this final value is used. Now we shouldn't have aliasing until detail sizes are smaller than our new sample size. You can see the results at left; these are the same size checkerboards as the original example, but this time, anti-aliasing was used. The results are clearly a lot better, especially at the smallest size, where the squares in the checkerboard are less than one pixel wide. You just see a grey slate. (Imagine you are looking at such a checkerboard from far off; you wouldn't see individual squares, but an overall grey color, the average of light and dark squares.) So What's This Got To Do With Fractals? Plenty. Fractals are infinitely detailed. That means that no matter how fine the sampling grid, there will always be some aliasing, because there are still details too small for the sampling grid to represent. Sometimes, the aliasing can be very distracting—as a fractal explorer, I know that a certain fractal has detail too fine to see, but that detail just becomes "mush" because there's no anti-aliasing. | |||
Take, for example, the images at right. You can't
tell what's at the center of the spiral, because it
just turns to mush when the details get smaller
than a pixel. Underneath it is an anti-aliased
version; although you can't make out the finer
details at the center of the spiral, you can see
the overall details that are bigger. Not only is
this more pleasing to the eye, it is also a "truer"
representation of the fractal image, since it
removes the aliasing "artifacts".
One serendipitous side-effect to anti-aliasing is that although it results in a 24-bit image (instead of the original 8-bit image) it actually compresses better as a JPEG than the original—not only is the file size smaller (20K instead of 53K) but the anti-aliasing helps cut down on the artifacting that you normally get when you save a fractal in JPEG format. How to Anti-Alias Fractals It's easiest if your software does it for you. Fractal eXtreme 
and Ultra Fractal
will anti-alias when creating "poster" images.
Still, if your fractal software of choice won't anti-alias for you, you're not completely out of luck. To anti-alias, you need more samples; no problem, just render the fractal bigger than you really want it. For example, if you want to show a 640x480 image, render it at twice that size or more. (I often use 1600x1200 with FractInt.) If you can't set your video display at that high a resolution, see if your fractal software has a render-to-disk option and use that. Then take your large image, and use a graphics program like Paint Shop Pro
to resize the image.
Here are two important tips to help you produce good anti-aliased images with graphics software. First, after loading the image, make sure you convert it to 24-bit color before resizing. Otherwise these programs won't use anti-aliasing as they resize. Second, apply a slight sharpening effect after the resize, to counteract some of the softening the anti-aliasing produces. |
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Almost all of the images here at fractalus.com
were anti-aliased in this way. In case you're not
convinced this produces better images, here are
a few more examples. Aliased images are on the
left, anti-aliased images are on the right.
 
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