A method for rendering a text string in a digital raster image suitable for block-wise transform coding, the method comprising: obtaining a partition of an image area into coding blocks for the block-wise transform coding; representing the text string as a plurality of graphical elements from a typeface which are arranged according to a tentative layout in the image area, wherein the tentative layout defines at least a position, orientation and size of each graphical element; modifying the tentative layout by applying a spectrum sparsening operation to at least one nonempty coding block, thereby obtaining a modified layout; and rendering a digital raster image of the graphical elements arranged according to the modified layout.