Print clarity on digitally printed textiles – a quantitative evaluation

Abstract

Print clarity of a digitally printed product has great impact on the final esthetic appearance and performance of the printed products. Print clarity on various textile substrates is considered as image sharpness in this research. The current standard test method is a subjective test where a printed fabric is evaluated visually by one or more human subjects. To advance digital printing of textiles further, it is critical to create a quantitative evaluation method for testing print clarity (sharpness), as has been done with paper. In this paper, a quantitative evaluation of the print clarity (sharpness) of a digitally printed test pattern on textiles was created. Different colors, directions, and fabrics (substrates) were considered in the design of experiment. Eight similar weight and structure woven polyester samples along with a paper substrate were printed with MS JP7 printers using nano-pigments and printed in two directions. The resulting prints were scanned with an EPSON Expression 11000XL Photo Scanner. Several software packages, including Image-Pro and MatLab, were used to process data to analyze and compare image contrast of the test pattern under different conditions. Improved print clarity in digital printing on polyester woven fabric was explored. The newly developed test method is a quantitative test method that makes optimization of the print quality (sharpness) easier and more accurate.