Aliasing occurs when a computer monitor, printer or graphics file does not have an adequate amount of resolution to display a graphic image or text. It is the jagged edges on curves and diagonal lines in a bitmap image while anti-aliasing is smoothing or merging the changeover of pixels in an image. A web designer uses these techniques for various purposes. When a website developer increases the size of a bitmap image, the appearance and effect of aliasing is emphasized more. To add pixels in the image to make the edges look less jagged, a web designer uses anti-aliasing. Thus, in order to make light of aliasing, a web designer uses anti-aliasings.
Aliasing is an event that is connected with any device or process where the data is separated into individual samples. It may be considered as a sort of meddling pattern, where there is some kind of ratio between the number of pixels in any given distance and a repetitive structure in the pattern in an image. The human eyes have a propensity to perceive this ratio as a meddling pattern which can overshadow the actual nature of the image.
Website designers need to modify the high resolution image in such a way to display them on a low resolution screen which renders to the degradation of the image and the user will not get a clear view of the image. While making the image of good resolution even in small size the web designer ends up making it too small sometimes. This causes aliasing and any further modifications will degrade the quality if the image or text. That is why, a web designer make use of anti-aliasing technique to keep the image resolution intact and thus a clean web site design. A web designer just adds pixels in the required area by zooming in.
Anti-aliasing is nothing but a solution to the problem of aliasing. The web site builder applies a difficult method to determine and carry out the filling in between the lighter and darker pixels of an image with various different colors and converts the alias pixels to grey. This technique will efficiently blur or smoothens the edge between the dark and light areas of an image or text. A web designer uses anti-aliasing to give a reliable and clear view of the image especially when he sees it from far distance. Although, it is fooling the eye but it is a great way to improve the readability of an image. There are many sites and software available nowadays which helps a web designer to apply anti-aliasing techniques in a more faster and advanced way.
A web designer can improve the images by using anti-aliasing in two ways, namely multisampling and supersampling. It helps the rounded edges look like smooth curves. It is widely used while creating games as it makes the games look a lot better and realistic.