Letters appear jagged on the computer screen because they are formed from many of these tiny squares or pixels. Traditional computer font rendering assumes that each pixel is either 'on' or 'off', appearing as tiny black squares. How does this help improve the quality of digital type display? And so, if when we see white on an LCD screen, we are really looking at red, green and blue stripes. However, if we were to magnify the image, we would see that each pixel is actually made up of three separate subpixels. If we were to look at a single pixel, our eye would see it as in the illustration above. Seen together, these sub-pixel triplets combine to be seen by the human eye as a single pixel. The equivalent of one pixel on an LCD screen is actually composed of three sub-pixels: one red, one green, and one blue (R-G-B). Most screens created images made up of pixels, which when magnified look like single squares. To understand how ClearType works, one first has to understand what makes an LCD screen different from other types of displays. How does ClearType display technology work? With these findings in mind, Microsoft began taking a closer look literally at how type was being rendered on screens. What was discovered is that word recognition is only subconscious when typographical elements such as the shape and weight of letterforms, and the spacing between letters work together to present words as easily recognized patterns.
#The font wizard free#
People become immersed in reading only when word recognition is a subconscious task and the conscious mind is free to read the text for meaning. They concluded that reading is a form of pattern recognition. Looking to further improve Microsoft's font rendering technology, Microsoft researchers spent more than two years sifting through a large amount of research related to both typography and the psychology of reading. Since the early nineties, Microsoft has continued to improve its display and font capabilities, including the further development of TrueType font technology originally licensed from Apple. How did Microsoft come to develop ClearType?ĬlearType builds upon a tradition of dedication to high-quality font technology at Microsoft. The extra resolution increases the sharpness of the tiny details in text display, making it much easier to read over long durations. Before ClearType, the smallest level of detail that a computer could display was a single pixel, but with ClearType running on an LCD monitor, we can now display features of text as small as a fraction of a pixel in width. With ClearType font technology, the words on your computer screen look almost as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper.ĬlearType works by accessing the individual vertical color stripe elements in every pixel of an LCD screen.
#The font wizard software#
ClearType is a software technology developed by Microsoft that improves the readability of text on existing LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays), such as laptop screens, Pocket PC screens, and flat panel monitors.
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