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Halftone Dot formation Method and Apparatus for Reducing Layer Thickness of Coloring Material Inside Halftone Dots, and Image Formation Apparatus

a technology of halftone dots and coloring materials, which is applied in the field of image processing methods, image processing apparatuses, and image forming apparatuses, can solve the problems of difficult compatibility of the amount of toner needed for the maximum density, high possibility of this problem, and excessive amount of toner for halftone reproduction, so as to achieve effective thinning of the halftone-dot portion, reduce the thickness of the coloring material inside the halftone dot, and achieve the effect of reducing the quality

Inactive Publication Date: 2011-01-13
FUJIFILM BUSINESS INNOVATION CORP
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  • Summary
  • Abstract
  • Description
  • Claims
  • Application Information

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention relates to an image processing method, apparatus, and image forming apparatus for generating a halftone-dot image by forming halftone dots with a predetermined size corresponding to an intensity of an input image signal. The invention aims to address issues related to excessive toner usage, deterioration of image quality during the transfer process, and non-fixed toner image thickness. The invention proposes techniques for controlling the amount of ink adhesion for forming halftone dots to adjust the thickness of the halftone dots.

Problems solved by technology

Since the height of the piled-up toner is in many cases determined by an amount of toner required for the maximum density of the image, it may be an excessive amount of toner for halftone reproduction.
In particular, since the size of a halftone dot is small in a highlight tone area (low density region), there are high possibilities that this problem occurs.
However, it is difficult that the amount of toner needed for the maximum density is compatible with the amount of toner appropriate for the halftone dot reproduction.
However, as described above, in the halftone-dot structure for the halftone reproduction, the toner layer may become excessively thick in many cases, and therefore, the toner which makes a low contribution to light absorption exists on the paper.
However, in the FM screen such as the mechanisms disclosed in the patent document 1, since the density of the image is reproduced with a minute density of dots, which are invisible (30 μm or less), some of the integrated (clustered) minute halftone dots may be thinned out and areas of colored pixels may be too small to reproduce dots stably.
Accordingly, there may occur a phenomenon that the crush of some of the halftone dots is different from the crush of other halftone dots, which may result in image noises.
However, when many pixels are thinned out outside the halftone dots, since the size reduction of the halftone dots is significant but an operation of thinning out the coloring material in the halftone dot portion is weakened, an effect of making the halftone dots uniformly thin can not be expected.
In particular, since the size of the halftone dots becomes small in highlight tone area (low density area), there are high possibilities that the above-mentioned problems occur.
The dot screen is easy in forming a halftone dot, but is easily affected by disturbance at the time of image formation and color moire.

Method used

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  • Halftone Dot formation Method and Apparatus for Reducing Layer Thickness of Coloring Material Inside Halftone Dots, and Image Formation Apparatus
  • Halftone Dot formation Method and Apparatus for Reducing Layer Thickness of Coloring Material Inside Halftone Dots, and Image Formation Apparatus
  • Halftone Dot formation Method and Apparatus for Reducing Layer Thickness of Coloring Material Inside Halftone Dots, and Image Formation Apparatus

Examples

Experimental program
Comparison scheme
Effect test

first embodiment

Procedure of the Halftone-Dot Process

[0081]FIG. 5 and FIGS. 6(A) to 6(E) are diagrams illustrating the binarization process (specifically, halftone-dot process) executed in the binarization processing section 20 according to the first embodiment. Here, in the case where the binarization processing section 20 forms non-output dot with the dot-shaped halftone dot (dot screen) being a process target, the following description will be given by assuming that the gap-profile storage section 29b stores the gap-size profile data of the gap-size variable system shown in FIG. 3(B).

[0082]FIG. 5 is a flow chart illustrating an outline of a process of the halftone-dot process by the binarization processing section 20 according to the first embodiment. FIGS. 6(A) to 6(E) are diagrams illustrating a process of generating ring-shaped halftone dots according to the halftone-dot process performed by the binarization processing section 20 of the first embodiment. For example, FIG. 6(A) shows an exampl...

second embodiment

Procedure of the Halftone-Dot Process

[0118]FIG. 10 and FIGS. 11(A) to 11(D) are diagrams illustrating a binarization process (specifically, halftone-dot process) in the image forming apparatus according to the second embodiment. Here, it is assumed that the marking engine 74 employs the electrophotographic method.

[0119]FIG. 10 is a flow chart illustrating an outline of a procedure of the halftone-dot process executed by the image forming apparatus 1 according to the second embodiment. FIGS. 11(A) to 11(D) are diagrams illustrating steps for generating ring-shaped halftone dots according to the halftone-dot process executed by the image forming apparatus 1 of the second embodiment. For example, FIG. 11(A) shows an example of the first binary data Do1 output from the first comparing process section 21, that is, the first bitmap data BM1. FIG. 11(B) shows an example of the second binary data Do2 output from the second comparing process section 22. FIG. 11(C) shows an example of the thi...

third embodiment

; Basic

Halftone-Dot Processing Procedure

[0130]FIGS. 13 and 14 are diagrams showing binarization processing of a third embodiment (specifically, a halftone-dot processing). The binarization processing of the third embodiment has a feature in that what has a line-shaped halftone dot (line screen) as its original halftone-dot structure is taken as a process target, and the binarized processing section 20 generates non-output dots in accordance with a predetermined rule.

[0131]Here, FIG. 13 is diagram illustrating a line-shaped halftone dot (line screen), and FIG. 14 is a diagram illustrating a process of generating a non-output dot (gap) with respect to the line-shaped halftone dot. FIGS. 14(A) to (E) correspond to FIGS. 6(A) to 6(E), respectively.

[0132]In the process of generating the line-shaped halftone dot, a comparator compares input multilevel data, which is the process target (see FIG. 13(A)) and a threshold-value matrix for the line-shaped halftone dot (see FIG. 13(B)) as shown ...

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Abstract

An image processing method generates a halftone-dot image by forming a halftone dot, which is represented by a set of one or plural output dots and corresponds to an intensity of an input image signal, while making a part of the dots constituting the halftone dot to be an actual non-output dot so as to reduce an amount of a coloring material of the halftone-dot portion. When the intensity of the image signal exceeds a predetermined value and is in a predetermined range, while maintaining contour dots, which are output dots contribute to formation of a contour of the halftone dot, to be the output dot, the image processing method makes a part of dots inside the contour dots to be the actual non-output dot.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This is a Division of application Ser. No. 11 / 357,950 filed Feb. 22, 2006. The disclosures of the parent application and Japanese Patent Application No. 2005-45107 filed on Feb. 22, 2005 and Japanese Patent Application No. 2006-32016 filed on Feb. 9, 2006, including the specifications, claims, drawings and abstracts are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.BACKGROUND[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention relates to an image processing method, an image processing apparatus, and an image forming apparatus. More specifically, the invention relates to a binarization processing technique for generating a halftone-dot image by forming a halftone dot having a predetermined size corresponding to an intensity of an input image signal, the halftone dot which is used to record a halftone-dot image on an image recording medium in a printing technique such as an electrophotographic method and an inkjet method.[0004]2....

Claims

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Application Information

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Patent Type & Authority Applications(United States)
IPC IPC(8): H04N1/405
CPCH04N1/4055
Inventor ISHII, AKIRATAKEBE, YOSHIFUMI
Owner FUJIFILM BUSINESS INNOVATION CORP
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