Prediction of preferred ClearType filters using the S-CIELAB metric

The appearance of rendered text is a compromise between the designer´s intent and the display capabilities. The ClearType rendering method is designed to enhance rendered text by exploiting the subpixel resolution available on color displays. ClearType represents the high-resolution font outline at the full subpixel resolution of the display and then filters the image to enhance contrast and reduce color artifacts. The filter choice influences text appearance, and people have clear preferences between the renderings with different filters. In this paper, we predict these preferences using S-CIELAB, a spatial extension to the perceptual color metric CIELAB. We calculate the S-CIELAB difference between designed and rendered fonts for various filters. We compare the size of these differences with preference data obtained from individual subjects.