A printing material cartridge mounted by being inserted into a cartridge mounting portion of a printing apparatus, includes: an identification portion on which identification information for identifying the printing material cartridge is recorded, in which the identification portion is formed at a readable position that is optically readable by a reading portion formed inside a cartridge mounting portion of the printing apparatus in an insertion process of inserting the printing material cartridge into the cartridge mounting portion.

In order to prevent streaks during the ink-jet paint coating of substrates, the invention provides a method for printing sheet-type substrates, in which a substrate (3) is moved in a feed direction (4) past an application device (7) by means of a conveying device (5) and during the movement of the substrate the application device (7) applies a fluid application material (9) drop by drop to the surface (30) of the substrate (3) in a pattern (14) with a pre-defined contour (15), in particular leaving out regions (16), through a plurality of ink-jet nozzles (70) arranged in a row transversely to the feed direction, in response to computer-controlled switching signals, wherein during the application of the pattern (14) and during the movement of the substrate (3) the ink-jet nozzles (70) are moved back and forth transversely to the feed direction (4), preferably in the longitudinal direction of the arranged row of ink-jet nozzles (70), such that the paths (72) traveled by the nozzles (70) over the substrate by the overlap of the movement back and forth with the movement in the feed direction (4) have direction components running perpendicular to the feed direction (4).

A printer includes a first ink head that ejects a first ink, a second ink head that ejects a second ink, a first dot controller that controls a dot size after curing of the ejected first ink, and a second dot controller that controls a dot size after curing of the ejected second ink. The second ink is ejected over the first ink on a recording medium, and the second ink is caused to have a dot size that is larger than a dot size of the first ink.

An inkjet printer includes a first ink head to eject a first ink, and a second ink head to eject a second ink. A generator generates dot groups including at least a first dot group and a second dot group including ink dots of the second ink. The dot groups include all the ink dots of the second ink. A first printing controller forms, on a recording medium, a first printing layer of the first ink and the first dot group. A second printing controller forms a second printing layer of the second dot group, above or below the first printing layer.

An object is to reduce coloring of specular reflection while improving gloss uniformity (particularly, gloss clarity). Recording is performed at least part of a surface of a recording medium by using a first color material with relatively high transmittance. In this case, control is performed such that thickness variation in the applied first color material is set to have an amplitude that generates interference fringes and to have a desired cycle within a range of 40 m or more and 320 m or less.

An image processing apparatus configured to generate, based on image data corresponding to a printing image, print data for causing a printer to execute printing includes an input unit (input device, display device) configured to receive, for each of the first ink and the second ink, an ink discharge correction volume for correcting an ink volume discharged from predetermined nozzles among a plurality of first nozzles and a plurality of second nozzles, and a print data generating unit (printer driver) configured to generate the print data based on the image data and the ink discharge correction volume input.

An imaging apparatus includes a print engine having a printhead that generates ink drops, and a printhead carrier that carries the printhead in a first direction and in a second direction. A controller determines an initial print direction based on ink drop information obtained by printing patches in the first direction and in the second direction. The controller is operatively coupled to the print engine to print an image based on the initial print direction.

A liquid discharge system includes a pretreatment execution device to perform pretreatment on a medium and a liquid discharge head to discharge liquid onto the medium based on image information on an image to be output. The liquid discharge system further includes circuitry configured to control a manner of the pretreatment based on the image information.

Printing methods and systems are described herein. In one example, a method includes rasterizing a document to create color rasters and linearizing the color rasters to create high drop weight (HDW) planes and low drop weight (LDW) planes. HDW and LDW halftone planes are created from the HDW and LDW planes. The HDW and LDW halftone planes are masked to create HDW and LDW printhead maps, and the HDW and LDW printhead maps are merged into print data. The print data is sent to a number of printheads.

An image forming apparatus includes a head unit that moves in a predetermined scanning direction and on which a first nozzle which discharges first ink including a black color material, a second nozzle which discharges second ink having higher brightness than that of the first ink, and a third nozzle which discharges third ink having higher brightness than that of the first ink are arrayed in the scanning direction, and a control portion. The control portion is set to perform a conversion processing which sets a type and amount of the ink which is discharged from the head unit according to color data included in the image data and use the first ink, the second ink, and the third ink according to the color data of the darkest point in the conversion processing.