A computer-implemented simulated emboldening mechanism for emboldening an input overscaled bitmap to generate an emboldened overscaled bitmap. The simulated emboldening adjusts the number of subpixels to turn on in the direction of emboldening taking into account contextual information regarding surrounding subpixels. Since the emboldening works directly from an overscaled bitmap, and takes such contextual information into account, legibility and readability of the resulting emboldened character is enhanced.