: Why is GIMP's rendering fonts differently than other applications? I noticed that if I compare the same font-family and font-size from other applications to GIMP, the output is different. In the

@Candy945

This is the text at 8pt, in an image with 96ppi (the common default setting for screen ppi in Windows platforms, the dependency on that has already been mentioned in another answer):



Looks pretty close to your examples - there are differences of one pixel at most - and that is for the scaled/zoomed versions, we'd have to compare the original sizes.

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@Becky351

This is caused by the pixel dimensions of the image in GIMP vs. Word, and the DPI setting which affects point size calculations.

When you work with a Word document, the document is rendered at a pixel size that simulates something probably close to 300dpi, and then it is downsampled (etc) for display at the display resolution.

So if you want to compare Word text rendering to GIMP, you need to ensure that your are working with the same "grid size." To experiment, create a document in GIMP that is 2550px x 3300px (that is: US letter @ 300ppi).

You will probably find the 8pt text renders very close to Word (with anti-aliasing ON unlike your example; Word is at right):



Here is a sample of text 8pt in a 400px @ 72dpi document with an inset 500% zoom (with anti-aliasing off as you have in your example):



Remember that points are a unit defined by their relation to inches (real-world unit of measure). In Photoshop at least, if you set type and then alter the DPI flag in the file without resampling, the point size of the type is recalculated.

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@Pope1402555

If I recall correctly, this could be due to anti-aliasing settings of the render. Haven't used GIMP in a while but I do remember this being an issue.

Fonts can be rendered differently depending on what the default settings are for that program, especially design programs.

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