The invention relates to a refractive transparent security element (60) for security papers, valuable documents and similar having a transparent or at least translucent feature layer (22) that comprises a plurality of elementary cells (62) in a predetermined geometric arrangement. Said elementary cells have a predetermined number of essentially achromatically refractive microstructured elements (64) that are aligned such that they refract incident light into a predetermined spatial area so that the light refracted by the individual microstructured elements (64) of an elementary cell (62) combine to form predetermined image information, and the elementary cells have a lateral dimension below the resolution limit of the eye.
