antialiased

Antialiased is an adjective describing methods used to reduce aliasing artifacts on digital images and text. Aliasing occurs when high-contrast edges are represented on a discrete grid, producing jagged stair-step edges known as jaggies. Antialiasing smooths these edges by blending neighboring colors or by increasing sample coverage at edge pixels, producing the perception of smoother contours.

In raster graphics, several strategies exist. Supersampling anti-aliasing (SSAA) renders the scene at a higher resolution and downscales to the target size, averaging color samples to produce smoother edges. Multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA) samples multiple points within edge-adjacent pixels to determine edge coverage, then blends color accordingly, while limiting memory and processing. Post-processing anti-aliasing methods, such as FXAA and SMAA, operate after rendering to detect jagged regions and apply edge-aware filters that blur or reweight colors to reduce visible jaggies with lower performance costs. For text and user interfaces, subpixel rendering exploits the layout of LCD color subpixels to increase apparent resolution of glyphs, sometimes paired with hinting to preserve legibility.

Antialiasing involves trade-offs among image sharpness, computational cost, and memory usage. High-quality methods can be expensive and may blur fine details; lighter methods are faster but produce softer results. Antialiased rendering is widely used in computer graphics, video games, and digital typography to improve perceived image quality.