Java2D text rendering quality

Question

Dear all,
I am currently trying to get high quality rendering for monochrome text, targeting epaper viewers. I draw strings into a BufferedImage, and display it on my LCD monitor in order to quickly check the rendering quality, before transferring it to epaper. I am encountering some disappointing surprises using Java2D, and cannot get a good output quality:
- TextAttribute.WEIGHT produces only 2 different renderings, regular or bold.
- Fonts appear very very light for sizes up to 17pt, and suddenly appear bold at 18pt+ sizes
I am working under Windows XP SP 2, with JDK 1.6.0. Here follows a small piece of code illustrating the second problem. When comparing output with Photoshop or Fireworks outputs, the results are really disapointing, and I am sure that I am missing something...
Thanks in advance for any help/tip.
Sincerely,
Jean-Marie
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.font.FontRenderContext;
import java.awt.font.TextLayout;
import java.awt.font.TextAttribute;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.text.AttributedString;
public class TextRendering extends JPanel {
    private static final int WIDTH = 2000;
    private static final int HEIGHT = 8000;
    private static final int MIN_SIZE = 13;
    private static final int MAX_SIZE = 72;
    private static final int STEP = 1;
    private BufferedImage buf;
    public TextRendering() {
        setMinimumSize(new Dimension(WIDTH, HEIGHT));
        setPreferredSize(new Dimension(WIDTH, HEIGHT));
        buf = new BufferedImage(WIDTH, HEIGHT, BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_GRAY);
        Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) buf.getGraphics();
        g2d.setColor(Color.WHITE);
        g2d.fillRect(0, 0, WIDTH, HEIGHT);
        g2d.setColor(Color.BLACK);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_TEXT_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_LCD_HRGB);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_RENDERING, RenderingHints.VALUE_RENDER_QUALITY);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_FRACTIONALMETRICS, RenderingHints.VALUE_FRACTIONALMETRICS_ON);
        // g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_TEXT_LCD_CONTRAST, 250);
        FontRenderContext frc = g2d.getFontRenderContext();
        Font f = new Font("Arial", Font.PLAIN, 24);
        int y = 20;
        for (int i = MIN_SIZE; i <= MAX_SIZE; i += STEP) {
            String s = new String(i + "pt- I would like to get a better rendering ! ");
            AttributedString attText = new AttributedString(s);
            attText.addAttribute(TextAttribute.FOREGROUND, Color.black);
            attText.addAttribute(TextAttribute.FONT, f.deriveFont((float)i));
            TextLayout textlayout = new TextLayout(attText.getIterator(), frc);
            textlayout.draw(g2d, 10, y);
            y += i + 10;
    public void paint(Graphics g) {
        Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g;
        g2d.drawImage(buf, 0, 0, null);
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        JFrame f = new JFrame("Text rendering demo");
        f.getContentPane().add(new JScrollPane(new TextRendering()), BorderLayout.CENTER);
        f.setSize (600, 800);
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        f.setVisible(true);
}

Answer 1

Of course, the same rendering problem can be observed with the more sophisticated "Font2DTest" example which can be found in the JDK samples: with the Arial font, the text becomes "semi-bold" starting from 18pt size, whereas it is very light for sizes up to 17pt.
Thanks again for any help.
Jean-Marie