How to align an 90 deg rotated label perfectly with the pixels?

Question

When rotating a label, the text is rendered very ugly. Is there an convenient way to get the label aligned with the pixels? Maybe there is some way of rounding the transform of the view, so that it isn't misaligned?

Answer 1

If you use CGAffineTransformRotate or a similar function you won't see any artifacts in the text because the label is drawn first and then rotated in its entirety.

If you are seeing artifacts using a transform, then the most likely source is a transparent label background distorting the appearance of the text. If the background is variable, such as pin stripe or a picture, then rotating the text will put different pixels adjacent to the text which can muddle its outline and apparent color.