A printing apparatus includes a head that discharges ink droplets, and a control unit that performs discharge control of the head. When printing a boundary region formed by an end portion of a first image and an end portion of a second image that is lighter than the first image, in discharge control of a specific ink, among a plurality of inks for printing the end portion of the first image, that exhibits lightness, when forming the end portion of the first image, lower than lightness of the end portion of the second image by a predetermined value or more, the control unit performs specific ink discharge control to cause a number of dots per unit area constituting the end portion of the first image to be smaller than a number of dots per unit area constituting a normal portion, of the first image, that is adjacent to the end portion of the first image.

A plurality of nozzle rows include a first nozzle row including a plurality of first nozzles configured to discharge first ink, a second nozzle row including a plurality of second nozzles configured to discharge second ink, and a third nozzle row including a plurality of third nozzles configured to discharge third ink. The third nozzle row is provided between the first nozzle row and the second nozzle row in the relative movement direction. When the first ink to be discharged from the first nozzle is replaced at least by the second ink to be discharged from the second nozzle and the third ink to be discharged from the third nozzle, the first control section forms an edge portion of an output image to be formed on a medium in such a manner that a first use rate is lower than a second use rate, the first use rate being a use rate of the second nozzle for the edge portion of the output image, the second use rate being a use rate of the second nozzle for a non-edge portion of the output image.

A liquid discharging apparatus includes: a discharging head configured to discharge an ultraviolet cure ink onto a recording medium; and a controller configured to control the discharging head to: discharge the ink onto the recording medium on the basis of a raster data for an image to be formed on the recording medium, the image including a solid image area formed with the raster data at 100% of a printing rate; and execute a gloss reduction printing in which the solid image area is printed on the recording medium by varying the printing rate such that printing rates lower than 100% appear along a printing direction periodically or aperiodically in the course of 100% printing rate.

When image recording is performed using a multi-pass recording mode, and when a dot recording ratio for a thinned-out image to be recorded by a discharge-defective nozzle is equal to or more than a threshold value, the image recording is performed on a medium after a discharge operation. When image recording is performed using the multi-pass recording mode, and when the dot recording ratio is less than the threshold value, the image recording is performed on the medium without the discharge operation.

An ink jet process is used to deposit a material layer to a desired thickness. Layout data is converted to per-cell grayscale values, each representing ink volume to be locally delivered. The grayscale values are used to generate a halftone pattern to deliver variable ink volume (and thickness) to the substrate. The halftoning provides for a relatively continuous layer (e.g., without unintended gaps or holes) while providing for variable volume and, thus, contributes to variable ink/material buildup to achieve desired thickness. The ink is jetted as liquid or aerosol that suspends material used to form the material layer, for example, an organic material used to form an encapsulation layer for a flat panel device. The deposited layer is then cured or otherwise finished to complete the process.

A deposition module within a web press for inhibiting media deformation may include a fluid deposition device located on a side of a media, and a processing device to control the fluid deposition device to selectively apply a wetting agent to the media. The deposition of the wetting agent may be based on the location of content printed on the media as defined by print data.

A liquid discharge apparatus includes a recording head configured to discharge a liquid to form a pattern on a recording medium and a reading device configured to read the pattern. The apparatus further includes circuitry configured to form at least two first markers while moving the recording head relative to the recording medium in a head movement direction; form a second marker at one of positions of the at least two first markers, to form a pattern including a reference marker formed with one of the at least two first markers and a measurement marker in which the second marker is overlaid on another of the at least two first markers; and measure a distance between the reference marker and the measurement marker in the head movement direction based on information obtained by the reading device.

A printing system is provided and includes an image processing portion that generates a generated image by image processing, and a printing portion that performs printing on a medium based on the generated image. The image processing portion generates the generated image by performing a quantization processing that performs quantization by comparing the pixel value of each pixel in the input image with a threshold, and in the quantization processing, calculates a dot influence value indicating to what extent a position corresponding to a selected pixel is covered by the ink dots formed at the position set on the medium in correspondence with the peripheral pixels of the selected pixel, performs adjustment of reflecting the dot influence value on at least one of the pixel value of the selected pixel or the threshold, and compares the pixel value and the threshold based on a value after adjustment.

Systems, methods, software for monitoring usage of a recording medium in an image forming apparatus. In one embodiment, a usage monitor receives a raster image, and identifies thresholds that distinguish different intensity levels reproduced by different drop sizes of the recording material. The usage monitor identifies a set of pixel values for a block of pixels from the raster image, performs a vectorized comparison of the set of pixel values to each of the thresholds to generate sets of comparison bits, determines a number of set bits in each of the sets of comparison bits, and updates a threshold counter for each of the thresholds based on the number of set bits. The usage monitor may then compute drop counts for different drop sizes based on the threshold counter for each of the thresholds.

Density unevenness accompanying a variation in an ejection characteristic of each nozzle is reduced without worsening granularity of an image. To this end, an image processing apparatus generates first corrected data by correcting image data by using a first correction table common to the plurality of nozzles. Further, the image processing apparatus generates second corrected data by correcting the image data by using a second correction table for each of the plurality of nozzles. Furthermore, the image processing apparatus generates first quantized data by quantizing the first corrected data and generates second quantized data by quantizing the second corrected data. After that, the image processing apparatus generates N-valued print data based on the first quantized data and the second quantized data.