Shortening a footprint is a technique to reduce the number of texture samples anisotropically filtered to determine a texture value associated with a graphics fragment. Reducing the number of texture samples anisotropically filtered reduces the number of texture samples read and simplifies the filter computation. Programmable knobs are used to shorten the footprint of a pixel in texture space thereby reducing the number of texture samples used during anisotropic filtering. These knobs permit a user to determine a balance between improved texture map performance and anisotropic texture filtering quality.