Stochastic screens robust to misregistration in multipass printing

Abstract

A new technique for design of stochastic screens is proposed that produces screens that are robust against mis-registration in multi-pass printing. Conventional stochastic screens are designed through an optimization process that minimizes low-frequency structure in halftone images under the assumption that the placement of pixels is accurate. In inkjet printing, however, a page is often printed in multiple passes to allow for better drying of inks and to minimize appearance of a head signature. Any potential mis-registration between the passes is typically not comprehended in the conventional stochastic screen design process. The mis-registration between the passes can therefore cause significantly increased graininess (low-frequency structure) in printed images produced with stochastic screens even though the corresponding electronic bitmaps are free from low-frequency structure. In this paper, we propose modifications to the stochastic screen design process that take the two pass printing into account and produce halftones that are robust to inter-pass mis-registration errors. This allows reduced tolerances and alignment requirements in manufacturing that translate to lower cost. The proposed technique works by modifying the screen design process to ensure that a majority of the minority pixels are concentrated in a single pass, which provides improved robustness to mis-registration between the passes. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed design technique performs significantly better than conventional stochastic screens in the presence of mis-registration errors.