How Anti-Aliasing Works

• Photoshop, like many graphics editing programs and rendering devices, uses anti-aliasing to soften the edges on images. This program functions by blending shades of color between a foreground image and a background in order to smooth out the jagged edges.
  
  

Applications

• Photoshop can take a jagged black text on a white page and smooth it out by blending in shades of gray around its edges to create an anti-aliased, polished image. This same technique can be applied to images with distinct lines layered on a heavily contrasting background such as a basketball net at night. This program can also be used to smooth out images previously cast in low resolution.
  
  

Downsides

• Many people have noted that the overuse of anti-aliasing or using it when the background does not have enough contrast with the foreground can lead to a blurry effect.