Mosaic color-encoding filters for single-chip, solid-state color imagers have been fabricated by dry etching uniform, dielectric color filter blanks. Although limited to certain three-color filter patterns, this approach enables higher definition patterns to be achieved than currently feasible using conventional lift-off techniques, and has the advantage of separating the patterning of the filter from the fabrication of the multilayer dielectric structure. The technique has been used to fabricate high resolution (definition better than 1 μm) green/cyan/white mosaic filter patterns from green filter blanks by dry etching with CHClF2.