How to create a smooth font?

[1331]

I'm designing my new site now and I just can't get the font to look sharp and smooth without edges. I'm using Arial atm but as it looks like crap in Photoshop.

Check out this example in the left column where they have some stats (50px Helvetica): Poker Rooms | Online Poker Rooms

I've read that you can't get the anti aliased effects using CSS because every computer/OS uses different rendering techniques.

How do I get the font to be sharp? Any help is much appreciated.

[Peter Willis]

Well it's two different questions really. To get it looking smooth in Photoshop is straight forward. You need to change the drop down box labelled "aa" from being "none" to being crisp (or any of the other suitable options). It's just below the main menu when you are working on fonts.

http://tutorial9.s3.amazonaws.com/wp...-photoshop.png

But you are quite right, "smooth" fonts on the actual website is different because different browsers render things in different ways. Most modern browsers will automatically make fonts looks "smooth", so I wouldn't worry about it unless it looks awful in Firefox/Chrome or a recent version of IE.

[1331]

Thanks Peter!

So I should not be worried when I'm handing over the mockup to the coding guy even though the fonts look ugly?

[pokerworx]

Try using Verdana as your heading/big text font and remove the bold from it, I also like the text sans-serif as body text. You could also mess with the colors imo the grey looks better that the blues orange/green (colored blind) softer colors like brown, greys and the ones close to black could make it look better, in all honestly though the site/stats look fine to me. Are you the guy that owns latest casino bonuses too?

[1331]

No, here is an interview with one of the guys behind the site: Attract 500,000 Visitors to Your Website Each Month

Are you the guy that owns latest casino bonuses too?

[gooderpoker]

you can also target the CSS to the browser, If you really want the same look in Chrome/Ffox/Safarie and IE then tell your coder to build the CSS to target each browser separately and nothing will fail and the look will be smooth an constant on any browser.
But for the effort involved I wouldn't worry about it with today's browsers it is what it is just hope they are not on IE 6