Patent ID: 7342585

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for emboldening an input oversealed bitmap, the method comprising the following: an act of accessing the input overscaled bitmap; and an act of using the input overscaled bitmap to generate an emboldened overscaled bitmap by at least performing the following: an act of identifying a direction of emboldening; an act of identifying a plurality of different subpixels within the bitmap that are part of a character to be emboldened and that each border one or more corresponding neighbor subpixels that are not part of the character; for each of the identified plurality of different subpixels, an act of selecting a number of neighboring subpixels that are not part of the character to be altered in such a way that they become part of an emboldened character, and wherein the selected number of neighboring subpixels to be altered for each of at least two of the identified plurality of different subpixels is different; and an act of selectively altering at least some of the selected number of neighboring subpixels in the direction of emboldening so that they become part of the emboldened character, wherein the act of altering includes averaging the different selected numbers of at least two identified plurality of different subpixels in such a way as to smooth variations between different selected numbers of neighboring subpixels to be emboldened; and an act of at least displaying or transmitting the emboldening overscaled bitmap.