Background
A single pixel on a colour subpixelated display is made of several colour primaries, typically three coloured elements—ordered (on various displays) either as blue, green, and red (BGR), or as red, green, and blue (RGB). Some displays have more than three primaries, often called MultiPrimary, such as the combination of red, green, blue, and yellow (RGBY), or red, green, blue and white (RGBW), or even red, green, blue, yellow, and cyan (RGBC).
These pixel components, sometimes called subpixels, appear as a single colour to the human eye because of blurring by the optics and spatial integration by nerve cells in the eye. The components are easily visible, however, when viewed with a small magnifying glass, such as a loupe. Over a certain resolution threshold the colours in the subpixels are not visible, but the relative intensity of the components shifts the apparent position or orientation of a line.
Methods that take this interaction between the display technology and the human visual system into account are called subpixel rendering algorithms. The resolution at which coloured subpixels go unnoticed differs, however, with each user—some users are distracted by the coloured "fringes" resulting from subpixel rendering.
Subpixel rendering is better suited to some display technologies than others. The technology is well-suited to LCDs and other technologies where each logical pixel corresponds directly to three or more independent coloured subpixels, but less so for CRTs.
In a CRT the light from the pixel components often spreads across pixels, and the outputs of adjacent pixels are not perfectly independent. If a designer knew precisely about the display's electron beams and aperture grille, subpixel rendering might have some advantage. But the properties of the CRT components, coupled with the alignment variations that are part of the production process, make subpixel rendering less effective for these displays.
The technique should have good application to organic light emitting diodes and other display technologies that organize pixels the same way as LCDs.
Read more about this topic: Subpixel Rendering
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