A liquid discharge apparatus includes a head array including heads each having nozzles to discharge liquid onto a recording medium, arranged as a nozzle line in a sub-scanning direction; a moving part to move the head array alternately in the scanning direction and in the sub-scanning direction perpendicular to each other while discharging or not discharging the liquid; and a controller including a memory and a processor. The processor adjusts image data for juncture areas of two heads adjacent to each other in the sub-scanning direction; and drives the head array to discharge the liquid from the nozzles while the moving part moves the head array. The adjusting adjusts the image data such that the image data is thinned to make print rates for the juncture areas smaller at ends of the nozzle lines, and the print rates vary among the juncture areas.

There are provided a printing system, a method of generating a halftone processing rule, a method of acquiring a characteristic parameter, image processing device and method, a halftone processing rule, a halftone image, a method of manufacturing a printed material, an ink jet printing system, and a program which are capable of reducing an operation load of a user and acquiring a halftone processing rule appropriate for the printing system. A characteristic parameter acquisition chart including a pattern for acquiring characteristic parameters related to characteristics of the printing system is output, and the output characteristic parameter acquisition chart is read by image reading means. The characteristic parameters are acquired by analyzing the read image of the characteristic parameter acquisition chart, and halftone processing rules that define the processing contents of halftone processes used in the printing system are generated based on the acquired characteristic parameters.

A method for compensating for position-dependent density fluctuations of print nozzles in any inkjet printer by a computer. The computer produces, for all substrates used, compensation profiles for the position-dependent density fluctuations over all print heads of the inkjet printer and applies the compensation profiles to compensate for the position-dependent density fluctuations in the inkjet printer. The computer determines in each case printer-specific or print head-specific influences and print substrate-specific influence factors with a generic reference print substrate, from which a reference compensation profile is produced which depends on the surface coverage and location. From this the computer produces a total compensation profile which is used to compensate for position-dependent density fluctuations.

A networked product imaging system includes devices that provide the production of imaged goods. Customer requirements are provided to a central computing device (CCD) that has two-way communication with a plurality of geographically separated image forming devices. The central computing device determines specifications for forming the image on the blank product in accordance with the customer's order. The central computing device selects an image forming device from the plurality of geographically separated image forming devices for fulfilling the order, based upon factors that include the specification of the image forming device available, the image forming inventory and the blank product inventory available at the geographic location of the image forming device. The selected image forming device forms the image on the blank product at the remote location.

An image processing apparatus is configured to generate a plurality of pieces of partial printing data by executing a generating process including a color conversion process. A printing execution device performs N-th and (N+1)-th partial printing. An area in which the N-th partial printing is performed includes an overlap area, and first and second non-overlap areas respectively arranged on upstream and downstream sides, in the conveying direction, with respect to the overlap area. In the overlap area, dots are formed by both the N-th and (N+1)-th partial printings. The color conversion process includes a first converting process for the first non-overlap area with reference to a first profile, a second converting process for the second non-overlap area with reference to a second profile, and a third converting process for the overlap area, the third converting process being different from both the first and second converting process.

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.

Broadly speaking, embodiments of the present technique provide apparatus and methods to print an image using masking techniques that control the operation of a droplet deposition head having at least one faulty nozzle. More specifically, an image is analysed to determine a pixel colour density for each pixel of the image. A masking technique is provided which may distribute the droplets (or sub-droplets) that a faulty nozzle is assigned to print among one or more neighbouring, functioning nozzles.

A printing control apparatus is configured to control printing using a print head provided with, on different head chips, a plurality of nozzle groups including a first nozzle group and a second nozzle group configured to eject ink of a same color, with at least a portion of a formation range of each of the nozzle groups overlapping each other. The different head chips is disposed in a direction that crosses an alignment direction of nozzles. The printing control apparatus includes a halftone processing unit configured to generate halftone data specifying a presence or absence of dots for each pixel serving as data to drive the nozzle groups based on image data. The halftone processing unit is configured to generate first halftone data to drive the first nozzle group and second halftone data to drive the second nozzle group in an uncorrelated manner.

A controller checks ink quantity to be ejected to a specific area on a first side (specific area ink quantity) and determines an ink quantity ratio. The specific area is a strip-shaped area including a side edge on upstream side in a conveying direction of a paper sheet on the first side. When the ink quantity ratio is larger than a reference ink quantity ratio, the controller performs a black conversion process on pixels in a conversion target range. The conversion target range is a range corresponding to the specific area in the image data of the first side. The black conversion process is a process of converting a pixel to which three color inks, i.e. cyan, magenta, and yellow inks are to be ejected into a pixel to which only black ink is to be ejected.

In a print head, a plurality of ejection ports for ejecting metallic ink, including a solvent and particles for imparting a metallic gloss, are arranged in a predetermined direction. A plurality of printing scans are performed to the same area of the print medium to print an image on the print medium. In the printing scan, the metallic ink being ejected from the print head to a print medium while moving the print head in a scanning direction intersecting the predetermined direction. At least one of the plurality of printing scans is set as a first scan having a higher print ratio than the other printing scans.