Effect of local microroughness on the gloss uniformity of printed paper surfaces

Abstract

A critical factor that affects the appearance of printed paper surfaces is gloss uniformity, which is usually assessed visually. To relate gloss uniformity to nonvisual quantities, we first visually identified areas of either high or low gloss on the same sample for two different types of paper. We then measured the roughness and the reflectance of these areas. Microroughness was measured with an atomic-force microscope, and roughness was measured over a larger area with a confocal laser scanning microscope. The local reflectance of the high-gloss and the low-gloss areas was obtained from images taken with a gloss-imaging instrument and compared with the roughness of each area. This correlation is nonlinear, and roughness is insufficient to predict the local reflectance. Light-scattering measurements were made in the specular direction to map the gloss uniformity over larger areas than was possible with the gloss-imaging instrument. These maps were used to show the possibility of using both the spatial frequency and the fan filters, which together form a set of cortex filters, to analyze the variation of the gloss about the mean value and its spatial distribution on the surface in terms of spatial frequency and azimuthal orientation.