Ink Saving Strategy Based on Document Content Characterization and Halftone Texturest

摘要

Common ink-saving techniques usually restrict the ink consumption when printing a document by replacing a percentage of cyan, magenta, and yellow, by black ink. Even though such methods achieve a considerable reduction in the amount of ink used in a page, the visual quality of the print is affected and unpleasing effects in pastels and skin tones are observed. On the other hand, the quality of the print is not only affected by the ink-saving algorithm, but also by the way the color halftoning algorithm arranges the dots in the print. Therefore, the relationship between the contents of the document to be printed and the printing process needs to be addressed by the ink-saving strategy. A color direct binary search halftoning method that strives to minimize both the ink usage and the perceived error between the continuous-tone color image and the color halftone image is proposed. Our goals are to estimate the effects of the ink-saving module of a printing workflow in individual regions of the document, and to determine the dot arrangement and ink combination that consumes the least amount of ink while preserving printing quality.