What is the most effective way to use displacement with Cycles? I have a PBR material with a normal map for some surface defects. I'm trying to use Displace to emboss some fonts but I'm just getting an outline instead of full depth.

Reference image:



Node set up:



Texture: (this is cropped the original is 2048x2048) Also, I've tried many combinations black on white/middle grey/alpha etc.



Mesh:



Result:
Add a glow effect in 2D editor like Gimp or Photoshop:



Next, create normal map using this image (in GIMP - normal map plugin)



Normal map gives mach better result: