How to get text in a CATextLayer to be clear - text

Question

I've made a CALayer with an added CATextLayer and the text comes out blurry. In the docs, they talk about "sub-pixel antialiasing", but that doesn't mean much to me. Anyone have a code snippet that makes a CATextLayer with a bit of text that is clear?
Here's the text from Apple's documentation:
Note: CATextLayer disables sub-pixel antialiasing when rendering text.
Text can only be drawn using sub-pixel antialiasing when it is
composited into an existing opaque background at the same time that
it's rasterized. There is no way to draw subpixel-antialiased text by
itself, whether into an image or a layer, separately in advance of
having the background pixels to weave the text pixels into. Setting
the opacity property of the layer to YES does not change the rendering
mode.
The second sentence implies that one can get good looking text if one composites it into an existing opaque background at the same time that it's rasterized. That's great, but how do I composite it and how do you give it an opaque background and how do you rasterize it?
The code they use in their example of a Kiosk Menu is as such: (It's OS X, not iOS, but I assume it works!)
NSInteger i;
for (i=0;i<[names count];i++) {
CATextLayer *menuItemLayer=[CATextLayer layer];
menuItemLayer.string=[self.names objectAtIndex:i];
menuItemLayer.font=#"Lucida-Grande";
menuItemLayer.fontSize=fontSize;
menuItemLayer.foregroundColor=whiteColor;
[menuItemLayer addConstraint:[CAConstraint
constraintWithAttribute:kCAConstraintMaxY
relativeTo:#"superlayer"
attribute:kCAConstraintMaxY
offset:-(i*height+spacing+initialOffset)]];
[menuItemLayer addConstraint:[CAConstraint
constraintWithAttribute:kCAConstraintMidX
relativeTo:#"superlayer"
attribute:kCAConstraintMidX]];
[self.menuLayer addSublayer:menuItemLayer];
} // end of for loop
Thanks!
EDIT: Adding the code that I actually used that resulted in blurry text. It's from a related question I posted about adding a UILabel rather than a CATextLayer but getting a black box instead. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3818676/adding-a-uilabels-layer-to-a-calayer-and-it-just-shows-black-box
CATextLayer* upperOperator = [[CATextLayer alloc] init];
CGColorSpaceRef space = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
CGFloat components1[4] = {1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0};
CGColorRef almostWhite = CGColorCreate(space,components1);
CGFloat components2[4] = {0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0};
CGColorRef almostBlack = CGColorCreate(space,components2);
CGColorSpaceRelease(space);
upperOperator.string = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"13"];
upperOperator.bounds = CGRectMake(0, 0, 100, 50);
upperOperator.foregroundColor = almostBlack;
upperOperator.backgroundColor = almostWhite;
upperOperator.position = CGPointMake(50.0, 25.0);
upperOperator.font = #"Helvetica-Bold";
upperOperator.fontSize = 48.0f;
upperOperator.borderColor = [UIColor redColor].CGColor;
upperOperator.borderWidth = 1;
upperOperator.alignmentMode = kCAAlignmentCenter;
[card addSublayer:upperOperator];
[upperOperator release];
CGColorRelease(almostWhite);
CGColorRelease(almostBlack);
EDIT 2: See my answer below for how this got solved. sbg.

Answer 1

Short answer — You need to set the contents scaling:
textLayer.contentsScale = [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale];
A while ago I learned that when you have custom drawing code, you have to check for the retina display and scale your graphics accordingly. UIKit takes care of most of this, including font scaling.
Not so with CATextLayer.
My blurriness came from having a .zPosition that was not zero, that is, I had a transform applied to my parent layer. By setting this to zero, the blurriness went away, and was replaced by serious pixelation.
After searching high and low, I found that you can set .contentsScale for a CATextLayer and you can set it to [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale] to match the screen resolution. (I assume this works for non-retina, but I haven't checked - too tired)
After including this for my CATextLayer the text became crisp. Note - it's not necessary for the parent layer.
And the blurriness? It comes back when you're rotating in 3D, but you don't notice it because the text starts out clear and while it's in motion, you can't tell.
Problem solved!

Answer 2

Swift
Set the text layer to use the same scale as the screen.
textLayer.contentsScale = UIScreen.main.scale
Before:
After:

Answer 3

Before setting shouldRasterize, you should:
set the rasterizationScale of the base layer you are going to rasterize
set the contentsScale property of any CATextLayers and possibly other types of layers(it never hurts to do it)
If you don't do #1, then the retina version of sub layers will look blurry, even for normal CALayers.
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
CALayer *mainLayer = [[self view] layer];
[mainLayer setRasterizationScale:[[UIScreen mainScreen] scale]];
CATextLayer *messageLayer = [CATextLayer layer];
[messageLayer setForegroundColor:[[UIColor blackColor] CGColor]];
[messageLayer setContentsScale:[[UIScreen mainScreen] scale]];
[messageLayer setFrame:CGRectMake(50, 170, 250, 50)];
[messageLayer setString:(id)#"asdfasd"];
[mainLayer addSublayer:messageLayer];
[mainLayer setShouldRasterize:YES];
}

Answer 4

First off I wanted to point out that you've tagged your question with iOS, but constraint managers are only available on OSX, so I'm not sure how you're getting this to work unless you've been able to link against it in the simulator somehow. On the device, this functionality is not available.
Next, I'll just point out that I create CATextLayers often and never have the blurring problem you're referring to so I know it can be done. In a nutshell this blurring occurs because you are not positioning your layer on the whole pixel. Remember that when you set the position of a layer, you use a float values for the x and y. If those values have numbers after the decimal, the layer will not be positioned on the whole pixel and will therefore give this blurring effect--the degree of which depending upon the actual values. To test this, just create a CATextLayer and explicitly add it to the layer tree ensuring that your position parameter is on a whole pixel. For example:
CATextLayer *textLayer = [CATextLayer layer];
[textLayer setBounds:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 200.0f, 30.0f)];
[textLayer setPosition:CGPointMake(200.0f, 100.0f)];
[textLayer setString:#"Hello World!"];
[[self menuLayer] addSublayer:textLayer];
If your text is still blurry, then there is something else wrong. Blurred text on your text layer is an artifact of incorrectly written code and not an intended capability of the layer. When adding your layers to a parent layer, you can just coerce the x and y values to the nearest whole pixel and it should solve your blurring problem.

Answer 5

You should do 2 things, the first was mentioned above:
Extend CATextLayer and set the opaque and contentsScale properties to properly support retina display, then render with anti aliasing enabled for text.
+ (TextActionLayer*) layer
{
TextActionLayer *layer = [[TextActionLayer alloc] init];
layer.opaque = TRUE;
CGFloat scale = [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale];
layer.contentsScale = scale;
return [layer autorelease];
}
// Render after enabling with anti aliasing for text
- (void)drawInContext:(CGContextRef)ctx
{
CGRect bounds = self.bounds;
CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(ctx, self.backgroundColor);
CGContextFillRect(ctx, bounds);
CGContextSetShouldSmoothFonts(ctx, TRUE);
[super drawInContext:ctx];
}

Answer 6

If you came searching here for a similar issue for a CATextLayer in OSX, after much wall head banging, I got the sharp clear text by doing:
text_layer.contentsScale = self.window!.backingScaleFactor
(I also set the views background layer contentsScale to be the same).

Answer 7

This is faster and easier: you just need to set contentsScale
CATextLayer *label = [[CATextLayer alloc] init];
[label setFontSize:15];
[label setContentsScale:[[UIScreen mainScreen] scale]];
[label setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 50, 50)];
[label setString:#"test"];
[label setAlignmentMode:kCAAlignmentCenter];
[label setBackgroundColor:[[UIColor clearColor] CGColor]];
[label setForegroundColor:[[UIColor blackColor] CGColor]];
[self addSublayer:label];