Print engine color management using customer image content

The production of quality color prints requires that color accuracy and reproducibility be maintained to within very tight tolerances when transferred to different media. Variations in the printing process commonly produce color shifts that result in poor color reproduction. The primary function of a color management system is maintaining color quality and consistency. Currently these systems are tuned in the factory by printing a large set of test color patches, measuring them, and making necessary adjustments. This time-consuming procedure should be repeated as needed once the printer leaves the factory. In this work, a color management system that compensates for print color shifts in real-time using feedback from an in-line full-width sensor is proposed. Instead of printing test patches, this novel attempt at color management utilizes the output pixels already rendered in production pages, for a continuous printer characterization. The printed pages are scanned in-line and the results are utilized to update the process by which colorimetric image content is translated into engine specific color separations (e.g. CIELAB-\u3eCMYK). The proposed system provides a means to perform automatic printer characterization, by simply printing a set of images that cover the gamut of the printer. Moreover, all of the color conversion features currently utilized in production systems (such as Gray Component Replacement, Gamut Mapping, and Color Smoothing) can be achieved with the proposed system

A new adaptive edge enhancement algorithm for color laser printers

This thesis presents a novel algorithm for improving quality of edges in printed text. The algorithm is designed to add pixels at selected edge locations after halftoning. The extent of the correction is proportional to the “strength” of the edge, as determined by comparing the local differences in a four-pixel neighborhood to a dynamically generated threshold. The process is computationally efficient and requires minimal memory resources. The performance of our proposed algorithm is clearly demonstrated on several characters and lines. While the algorithm aims to improve the quality of printed text (edges), it is possible to extend its application to improvement of any edge identifiable in an image document

A Guide to image preparation for multiple media

With the advanced technology in this information requisite world, the way of communication has been changed into using multiple media. People use different media to publish their ideas, not just on paper. The same information may be presented in different formats because of different purposes or situations. However, each of the four major media (print, Web, CD-ROM, and video) has different capabilities for displaying image information. Images optimized for one will not necessarily work well with the others. It happens all the time that people spend much time remanipulating an image which has already been made for another media. For example, it is necessary to reduce the color depth and resolution of an image once it is moving from paper output to the World Wide Web because of the monitor limitation and the need for faster transfer rate. The problem exists when switching images among different output media such as video, multimedia CD-ROM, the World Wide Web and print. Quality and performance are the criteria for good publishing. This thesis project would establish guidelines for the designer, which would show the way to manipulate images once and have them work well in all media, including how to optimize images for print, the World Wide Web, CD-ROM, and video. The parameters which would be explored are: resolution, gamma correction, and color depth. After tests have been run on, an image format with 266 pixel per inch, 24-bit color depth, and no gamma correction could be established to satisfy the needs for image quality of print, Web, CD-ROM, and video publishing with extra gamma correction of 70 percent at midtone of 50 percent for video production

Clustered-dot periodic halftone screen design and ICC profile color table compression

This dissertation studies image quality problems associated with rendering images in devices like printing or displaying. It mainly includes two parts: clustered-dot periodic halftone screen design, and color table compression. Screening is a widely used halftoning method. As a consequence of the lower resolution of digital presses and printers, the number of printer-addressable dots or holes in each microcell may be too few to provide the requisite number of tone lev- els between paper white and full colorant coverage. To address this limitation, the microcells can be grouped into supercells. The challenge is then to determine the desired supercell shape and the order in which dots are added to the microcell. Using DBS to determine this order results in a very homogeneous halftone pattern. To simplify the design and implementation of supercell halftone screens, it is common to repeat the supercell to yield a periodically repeating rectangular block called the basic screen block (BSB). While applying DBS to design a dot-cluster growth order- ing for the entire BSB is simpler to implement than is the application of DBS to the single non-rectangular supercell, it is computationally very inefficient. To achieve a more efficient way to apply DBS to determine the microcell sequence, we describe a procedure for design of high-quality regular screens using the non-rectangular super- cell. A novel concept the Elementary Periodicity Set is proposed to characterize how a supercell is developed. After a supercell is set, we use DBS to determine the micro-cell sequence within the supercell. We derive the DBS equations for this situation, and show that it is more efficient to implement. Then, we mainly focus on the regular and irregular screen design. With digital printing systems, the achievable screen angles and frequencies are limited by the finite addressability of the marking engine. In order for such screens to generate dot clusters in which each cluster is identical, the elements of the periodicity matrix must be integer-valued, when expressed in units of printer-addressable pixels. Good approximation of the screen sets result in better printing quality. So to achieve a better approximation to the screen sets used for commercial offset printing, irregular screens can be used. With an irregular screen, the elements of the periodicity matrix are rational numbers. In this section, first we propose a procedure to generate regular screens starting from midtone level. And then we describe a procedure for design of high-quality irregular screens based on the regular screen design method. We then propose an algorithm to determine how to add dots from midtone to shadow and how to remove dots from midtone to highlight. We present experimental results illustrating the quality of the halftones resulting from our design procedure by comparing images halftoned with irregular screens using our approach and a template-based approach. We also present the evaluation of the smoothness and improvement of the proposed methods. In the next part, we study another quality problem: ICC profile color table compression. ICC profiles are widely used to provide transformations between different color spaces in different devices. The color look-up tables (CLUTs) in the profiles will increase the file sizes when embedded in color documents. In this chapter, we discuss compression methods that decrease the storage cost of the CLUTs. For DCT compression method, a compressed color table includes quantized DCT coefficients for the color table, the additional nodes with large color difference, and the coefficients bit assignment table. For wavelet-based compression method, a compressed color table includes output of the wavelet encoding method, and the additional nodes with large color difference. These methods support lossy table compression to minimize the network traffic and delay, and also achieves relatively small maximum color difference

Printed texture guided color feature fusion for impressionism style rendering of oil paintings.

As a major branch of Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR), image stylization mainly uses computer algorithms to render a photo into an artistic painting. Recent work has shown that the ex-traction of style information such as stroke texture and color of the target style image is the key to image stylization. Given its stroke texture and color characteristics, a new stroke rendering method is proposed. By fully considering the tonal characteristics and the representative color of the original oil painting, it can fit the tone of the original oil painting image into a stylized image whilst keeping the artist's creative effect. The experiments have validated the efficacy of the proposed model in comparison to three state-of-the-arts. This method would be more suitable for the works of pointillism painters with a relatively uniform style, especially for natural scenes, otherwise, the results can be less satisfactory

Structure-aware halftoning

our result faithfully preserves the texture details as well as the local tone. All images have the same resolution of 445×377. This paper presents an optimization-based halftoning technique that preserves the structure and tone similarities between the original and the halftone images. By optimizing an objective function consisting of both the structure and the tone metrics, the generated halftone images preserve visually sensitive texture details as well as the local tone. It possesses the blue-noise property and does not introduce annoying patterns. Unlike the existing edge-enhancement halftoning, the proposed method does not suffer from the deficiencies of edge detector. Our method is tested on various types of images. In multiple experiments and the user study, our method consistently obtains the best scores among all tested methods.

Pushing the Limits of 3D Color Printing: Error Diffusion with Translucent Materials

Accurate color reproduction is important in many applications of 3D printing, from design prototypes to 3D color copies or portraits. Although full color is available via other technologies, multi-jet printers have greater potential for graphical 3D printing, in terms of reproducing complex appearance properties. However, to date these printers cannot produce full color, and doing so poses substantial technical challenges, from the shear amount of data to the translucency of the available color materials. In this paper, we propose an error diffusion halftoning approach to achieve full color with multi-jet printers, which operates on multiple isosurfaces or layers within the object. We propose a novel traversal algorithm for voxel surfaces, which allows the transfer of existing error diffusion algorithms from 2D printing. The resulting prints faithfully reproduce colors, color gradients and fine-scale details.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures; includes supplemental figure

Compensating Printer Modulation Transfer Function in Spatial and Color Adaptive Rendering Workflows

Experiments have shown that the quality of printed images depends on the capacity of the printing system to accurately re- produce details. We propose to improve the quality by compensat- ing for the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) of the printing system. The MTF of the printing system is measured using a mod- ified version of the method proposed by Jang and Allebach [1]. Then the MTF is adaptively compensated in the Fourier domain, depending on the frequency and on the local mean value. This compensation is included within our mathematical framework for Spatial and Color Adaptive Gamut Mapping Algorithms. Results of a category judgment experiment show significant improvement as the printed MTF compensated images obtain the best scores

Laser scanner jitter characterization, page content analysis for optimal rendering, and understanding image graininess

In Chapter 1, the electrophotographic (EP) process is widely used in imaging systems such as laser printers and office copiers. In the EP process, laser scanner jitter is a common artifact that mainly appears along the scan direction due to the condition of polygon facets. Prior studies have not focused on the periodic characteristic of laser scanner jitter in terms of the modeling and analysis. This chapter addresses the periodic characteristic of laser scanner jitter in the mathematical model. In the Fourier domain, we derive an analytic expression for laser scanner jitter in general, and extend the expression assuming a sinusoidal displacement. This leads to a simple closed-form expression in terms of Bessel functions of the first kind. We further examine the relationship between the continuous-space halftone image and the periodic laser scanner jitter. The simulation results show that our proposed mathematical model predicts the phenomenon of laser scanner jitter effectively, when compared to the characterization using a test pattern, which consists of a flat field with 25% dot coverage However, there is some mismatches between the analytical spectrum and spectrum of the processed scanned test target. We improve experimental results by directly estimating the displacement instead of assuming a sinusoidal displacement. This gives a better prediction of the phenomenon of laser scanner jitter. ^ In Chapter 2, we describe a segmentation-based object map correction algorithm, which can be integrated in a new imaging pipeline for laser electrophotographic (EP) printers. This new imaging pipeline incorporates the idea of object-oriented halftoning, which applies different halftone screens to different regions of the page, to improve the overall print quality. In particular, smooth areas are halftoned with a low-frequency screen to provide more stable printing; whereas detail areas are halftoned with a high-frequency screen, since this will better reproduce the object detail. In this case, the object detail also serves to mask any print defects that arise from the use of a high frequency screen. These regions are defined by the initial object map, which is translated from the page description language (PDL). However, the information of object type obtained from the PDL may be incorrect. Some smooth areas may be labeled as raster causing them to be halftoned with a high frequency screen, rather than being labeled as vector, which would result in them being rendered with a low frequency screen. To correct the misclassification, we propose an object map correction algorithm that combines information from the incorrect object map with information obtained by segmentation of the continuous-tone RGB rasterized page image. Finally, the rendered image can be halftoned by the object-oriented halftoning approach, based on the corrected object map. Preliminary experimental results indicate the benefits of our algorithm combined with the new imaging pipeline, in terms of correction of misclassification errors. ^ In Chapter 3, we describe a study to understand image graininess. With the emergence of the high-end digital printing technologies, it is of interest to analyze the nature and causes of image graininess in order to understand the factors that prevent high-end digital presses from achieving the same print quality as commercial offset presses. We want to understand how image graininess relates to the halftoning technology and marking technology. This chapter provides three different approaches to understand image graininess. First, we perform a Fourier-based analysis of regular and irregular periodic, clustered-dot halftone textures. With high-end digital printing technology, irregular screens can be considered since they can achieve a better approximation to the screen sets used for commercial offset presses. This is due to the fact that the elements of the periodicity matrix of an irregular screen are rational numbers, rather than integers, which would be the case for a regular screen. From the analytical results, we show that irregular halftone textures generate new frequency components near the spectrum origin; and these frequency components are low enough to be visible to the human viewer. However, regular halftone textures do not have these frequency components. In addition, we provide a metric to measure the nonuniformity of a given halftone texture. The metric indicates that the nonuniformity of irregular halftone textures is higher than the nonuniformity of regular halftone textures. Furthermore, a method to visualize the nonuniformity of given halftone textures is described. The analysis shows that irregular halftone textures are grainier than regular halftone textures. Second, we analyze the regular and irregular periodic, clustered-dot halftone textures by calculating three spatial statistics. First, the disparity between lattice points generated by the periodicity matrix, and centroids of dot clusters are considered. Next, the area of dot clusters in regular and irregular halftone textures is considered. Third, the compactness of dot clusters in the regular and irregular halftone textures is calculated. The disparity of between centroids of irregular dot clusters and lattices points generated by the irregular screen is larger than the disparity of between centroids of regular dot clusters and lattices points generated by the regular screen. Irregular halftone textures have higher variance in the histogram of dot-cluster area. In addition, the compactness measurement shows that irregular dot clusters are less compact than regular dot clusters. But, a clustered-dot halftone algorithm wants to produce clustered-dot as compact as possible. Lastly, we exam the current marking technology by printing the same halftone pattern on different substrates, glossy and polyester media. The experimental results show that the current marking technology provides better print quality on glossy media than on polyester media. With above three different approaches, we conclude that the current halftoning technology introduces image graininess in the spatial domain because of the non-integer elements in the periodicity matrix of the irregular screen and the finite addressability of the marking engine. In addition, the geometric characteristics of irregular dot clusters is more irregular than the geometric characteristics of regular dot clusters. Finally, the marking technology provides inconsistency of print quality between substrates

Color Encodings for Image Databases

There are a number of color encoding standards that have lately been developed ant are being proposed to the imaging community for different encoding steps in the color imaging workflow, optimized for different purposes. In this paper, their applicability for master and derivative image file encoding for image databases is discussed. Several types of image databases are defined, and the advantages and disadvantages of archiving master files after different image workflow steps are outlined. Several input- and output-referred encodings are summarized and discussed in relation to their applicability for image database file encoding