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WPF Blurriness/Washed Out-ness Explained

This has bugged me since the beginning of time! OK, since the beginning of ever seeing WPF forms and controls. Have you ever noticed that WPF elements looks blurry and washed out compared to non-WPF elements?

WPF:

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(sorry to pick on you NCover, but you were open at the time)

Non-WPF:
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Can you spot the difference? Particularly in the text.  Well it seems I’m not crazy! there is finally an answer for this! and it should be fixed by WPF 4.0.

There are numerous, other people who have also complained about this.  And a suggested fix for some quirks.  But the official word as quoted in that first answer by the WPF Graphics Team is:

We are replacing WPF’s text rendering stack in WPF 4.0, and this should allow you to render text with comparable sharpness to what you’re used to with GDI. The reason the existing text stack in WPF looks blurrier than GDI’s is that GDI text is typically rendered with Compatible Width Layout, whereas WPF’s existing text stack always uses Ideal Width Layout. Compatible Width Layout snaps glyphs to pixel boundaries, Ideal Width does not, which is why WPF’s text looks blurrier than GDI’s. WPF’s existing text stack also does not support use of the embedded bitmaps that are included in many fonts and are intended to be used when rendering at smaller sizes.

The new text stack in WPF 4.0 will allow Compatible Width Layout, and it will also support embedded font bitmaps. We believe this will solve all of our text blurriness issues.

Horray for that!

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Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Friday, March 20, 2009, at 2:42 pm by Graham O'Neale. Filed in .NET and tagged wpf.

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  1. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 – Complete with Blurry WPF Font Rendering! « {Programming} & Life on 22-May-09 at 8:56 am

    [...] case any of you do not know what I’m talking about, see my previous article where I raved about the same thing in all WPF apps. Which is one huge reason which aids my decision [...]

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My name is Graham O'Neale and I'm a software architect from Gold Coast, Australia. I am an overtime thinker, full time coder and awake part time in the real world. I have a keen interest in software development, particularly in the realm of programming (C#, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, LINQ (2 SQL), Entity Framework, Silverlight, Blend, WCF, WPF) and a keen interest in the cutting edge and innovation. I have a new found love for design patterns, ALT.NET practices and well crafted software architecture. The purpose of this blog is to express any thoughts, findings, tips and gripes along my travels in the wonderful world of coding and technology...
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