Disclosed is a method, system, and program for reducing toner in an image comprised of raster pel data. A toner saving tag (TST) can be embedded that causes a printing apparatus to process the submission through a regular print path without any post-processing and to reduce toner usage by controlling the energy applied to a light emitting source to create a latent image on a photoreceptor. Further, the method and system applies under certain circumstances both post-processing toner saving mode using pixel elimination and toner saving mode that controls the energy applied to create the latent image while maintaining pixel integrity.

An image forming apparatus includes a plurality of image formers each capable of forming, on a sheet, an overlap image and a non-overlap image, a fixer that fixes, on the sheet, a whole image composed of the overlap images and the non-overlap images, and a hardware processor that controls each of the plurality of image formers such that a difference in image at a boundary between the overlap image and the non-overlap image is reduced in the whole image.

An image forming apparatus includes a setting unit configured to set a thinning amount smaller than one pixel for each line data in a high density area in image data, a comparison unit configured to compare the thinning amount set by the setting unit with a predetermined threshold, and a processing unit configured to execute, based on a result of comparison by the comparison unit, a thinning process by using a thinning amount larger than the thinning amount set by the setting unit or a thinning amount smaller than the thinning amount set by the setting unit as for M pixels out of N pixels (N>M) contained in the line data, and a thinning process by using the thinning amount set by the setting unit as for the rest of the N pixels contained in the line data.

According to an aspect of the invention, an image processing device includes a storage that stores character information, which is information affecting legibility of a character, on a character-by-character basis, and circuitry configured to determine a toner saving ratio for each character contained in a to-be-printed image so that legibility of the character achieves a preset target value at the determined toner saving ratio by assessing the legibility of the character based on the character information.

A technique is described by which a warped security feature is created on a substrate using a hybrid vector/bitmap process. The print element follows a series of curved vector lines during printing to form the security feature, instead of the straight line-by-line process used with a bitmap image. The method of producing the warped security feature, the warped security feature, and the substrate containing the warped security feature are considered to be unique and inventive.

A system directs a laser beam to mark a material with an alphanumeric code. Character and quality information corresponding to a mark to apply to the material with the laser beam can be received, a font definition that specifies character segments can be obtained, a set of multiple spaced locations can be generated from the character segments in accordance with the character and quality information, and the material can be marked with the laser beam by directing the laser beam to dwell at the locations and move between the locations without deactivating the laser beam.

An image forming apparatus includes a character drawer and a storage device. The character drawer creates a graphic image of a character contained in print data. The storage device stores the graphic image created by the character drawer. When the graphic image of the character is absent in the storage device, the character drawer creates a graphic image of the character and allows the created graphic image to be stored in the storage device.