This has got to be a setting that Sib 7 has set wrong, but all the thickness of the lines in the staves are all over the place, top line sharp, second line grey and twice as thick, etc.. it's a scaling error and it happens at all zoom levels, never seen this before on Sib 5 or Sib 6.
It does only seem to be the staves, everything else seems OK
I'm on PC, what also may be releveant is my screen resolution, as I use a pair of 1920x1200 monitors.
I exported a score as a PDF, and the PDF output is perfect, so it's definately the way Sib 7 is putting it to my screen. Though I noticed in the print preview panel, is wrong there too.
Maybe Sib 7 doesn't understand the 1920x1200 resolution?
Andy, this is a feature of Sibelius 7 using GDI+ rather than GDI for drawing. GDI was integer-based, and everything had to be drawn on an exact pixel, so Sibelius 6 snapped everything to the nearest pixel, even if that led to an irregular layout. With GDI+, all dimensions are floating point numbers, so items can be drawn anywhere, not necessarily on an exact pixel, and anti-aliasing is used. The staff lines which look like thicker grey lines are examples of staff lines that are drawn in-between exact pixels, so two adjacent lines of pixels are semi-darkened.
Though you have seen it only on staff lines, the same effect can also occasionally be seen on note stems, in the vertical direction.
The benefits of GDI+ include:
- the layout on screen will more closely approximate the final printed layout;
- fine adjustments of typography layout are now possible: one of the major new features of Sibelius 7.
The anti-aliasing effect ought not to be as glaringly apparent as you report, so check the following things out:
1. ensure that you have the Windows video resolution configured to be the native resolution of your display - this is normally the highest possible setting that Windows will allow;
2. if you find that makes text too small for you, then use the Windows DPI scaling configuration to enlarge things (rather than running Windows video at less than the native resolution of the display);
3. the effect of staff lines appearing to have different thicknesses should disappear as you use the Sibelius zoom-in feature;
4. maybe view the screen from slightly further away, so that your eyes cannot perceive individual pixels, and the anti-aliasing magic will work.
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Sibelius 6.2, PhotoScore Ult 6.1, Dolet 5.6 for Sibelius, Windows 7 32-bit SP1, 4GB RAM
If what you say is right here, then I need to return Sibelius 7 and go back to Sibelius 6, this is totally not acceptable, the screen display is horrible.
If GDI+ has done this then go back to GDI, it was perfect then, and GDI+ is awful, and why isn't everyone experiencing this?
I run my monitors at their highest 1920x1200 resolution, I cannot believe that Sibelius 7 has such such a fundemental issue, such as not even being able to draw it's stave line properly,
Can someone confirm this is a problem with Sibelius 7 that is not resolveable, in which case I will have to return Sib 7 - I am finding this hard to believe such a disaster could have been allowed to happen.
I can confirm that the stave resolution is pretty poor. I use a 24" Iiyama monitor with a high end graphics card and when working on large scores it is difficult to see where notes lay, caused by the difference in the thickness of lines, some of which are grey and bleed into other lines. This,as I say is very noticable on large sypmhonic scores. I spent some time thinking the problem was at my end - again the forum has worked in identifying pitential problems.
It may make a difference whether you zoom in/out with Ctrl +/- or with the zoom slider, as the former was originally designed to use %s producing a whole number of pixels per space to avoid this.
That is the question. Many people might notice it, but few find it unacceptable. Can you attach a screen clipping of what appears to you to be a bad example?
I find that Ben's suggestion does result in more consistent staff lines, at the particular zoom levels that Ctrl +/- deliver: the lines of any given staff will either be all clear, or all greyed. Ctrl/scroll wheel is not so consistent.
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Sibelius 6.2, PhotoScore Ult 7.0.1, Dolet 5.6 for Sibelius, Windows 7 32-bit SP1, 4GB RAM
Here is a screen grab, using the select graphic function. With a large score, it becomes difficult to read, especially when a ledger line ends up grey.
Is this really the quality we now have to accept from Sibelius?
I'm grateful that try as I might, I cannot get my staves to look at all bad. Maybe my eyesight is just not discerning enough... I am fortunate that I cannot reproduce that display under any view or zoom settings.
> Here is a screen grab, using the select graphic function.
Sorry, that's not what is needed. A graphic export is NOT what is appearing on the screen. And the .jpg compression has spoilt the detail. Please use Start -> Acessories -> Snipping Tool to take a genuine screen shot, and use a lossless compression such as .png format to save the picture.
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Sibelius 6.2, PhotoScore Ult 7.0.1, Dolet 5.6 for Sibelius, Windows 7 32-bit SP1, 4GB RAM
Andy, could you try setting the background texture to be a pure white colour, instead of the present mottled pink? And then post another snipping of the same page? Thanks.
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Sibelius 6.2, PhotoScore Ult 7.0.1, Dolet 5.6 for Sibelius, Windows 7 32-bit SP1, 4GB RAM
Andy, what version of Windows, and at which Service Pack level are you running?
Your screen dump is worse that I am seeing: your staff lines are being trebled in thickness, when the worst I expect is doubled. Edit: strike that out: the trebling is some artifact of the way this forum scales attached graphics. When I look at your original .png file, the lines are only doubled, as I would expect for the anti-aliasing. Your display is no worse than I am seeing.
Do you find any improvement if you stick to the zoom levels than Ben recommended above?
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Sibelius 6.2, PhotoScore Ult 7.0.1, Dolet 5.6 for Sibelius, Windows 7 32-bit SP1, 4GB RAM
I'm running Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit), I don't think sticking to the old 87.5/75% type scaling makes, much difference (I thought it did first of all, but then decided it was no different. It still does it at 100%, though it does look a lot better at 150% plus zoom, but that is getting too big for any useful purpose.
I was going to start a different thread about this behavior before I saw this one.
It really makes working with Sibelius significantly harder on the eyes. I went back to Sibelius 6 to compare and the difference is night and day.
Sticking to the Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-- zoom levels helps a little, but not hugely; for example, with the score I have up right now (5.0mm) staves, when I view it at 75%, which in the past has been a very nice zoom level, half the staves look nice and sharp and half of them are "between pixels" and look like thick gray lines instead of thin black ones.
This is a real noticeable step backwards, in my opinion. It adds a lot of eyestrain to look at a computer screen for hours when a lot of the elements are slightly fuzzy (as your eyes keep wanting to try to bring them back into focus).
I gather from Ben Finn's reply that this is considered to be a feature, but if the old behavior is still present but disabled, it would make a huge difference to this user if there were a user option to reenable it.
(specs: Windows 7 64-bit SP 1, 1920x1200 LCD screen)
Here is a screenshot from Sibelius 5. The same thing happens except that it will make all five lines of a staff thicker than all of the other staves. It isn't as bad, though, because at least it is consistent within the staff.
Well here is my final conclusion on this stave issue, I have found a staff size of 5.1mm and a zoom of 75% produces a tolerable result, though I suspect these results are unique to my 1920x1200 resolution.
I am sure a fix for this somewhat major issue will come soon.....
Sib7display.jpg