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.

White-balance is improved when printing on colored media, while minimizing the time and use of costly materials required by present approaches. In an embodiment, the typical solid white fill or background layer is altered by including in the white layer one or more of the other colors already available in the printer to shade this layer. Thus, a small amount of cyan, for example, helps balance a pink-ish (red) media; yellow is used for blue media; and magenta is used for green media; as well as combinations thereof. A combination of transparent process inks and opaque white helps to maintain brightness (luminosity).

There is provided an ink jet recording apparatus including an ink jet head and a drive circuit. The ink jet head forms an image on a recording medium in response to a drive signal applied to multiple piezoelectric elements. The drive signal causes multiple pressure chambers corresponding to the multiple piezoelectric elements to expand or to contract in volume and causes ink in the multiple pressure chambers to be discharged from multiple nozzles. The drive circuit generates a drive signal for discharging multiple liquid droplets to one pixel for combining the multiple liquid droplets together and applies the drive signal to each of the multiple piezoelectric elements of the ink jet head. The drive signal includes multiple discharge pulses which make velocities of tips of respective liquid columns substantially same after a predetermined time from starting of ink discharge from the nozzles.

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.

Provided is an inkjet recording apparatus including: a nozzle configured to eject droplets including a first droplet and a second droplet larger than the first droplet; a moving mechanism that moves a sheet relative to the nozzle; and a processor configured to generate ejection data for the droplets, the ejection data corresponding to a dot image formed by ejecting the droplets from the nozzle on the sheet moved relatively to the nozzle by the moving mechanism, wherein the processor is configured to replace the second droplet for a pixel of interest in an original ejection data for generating the ejection data with the first droplet when the droplets are not ejected for n pixels in a row after the pixel of interest to generate the ejection data, where n is an integer of 2 or more.

An image processing apparatus generates dot data for printing an image on a printing medium by using dots of different sizes formed by a plurality of nozzles ejecting ink. The image processing apparatus includes a first acquisition unit that acquires dot data specifying printing or non-printing of each of the dots of a plurality of sizes for each pixel, a specification unit that specifies a dot having a strong possibility of being pulled by a dot having landed earlier on the printing medium of dots in the dot data, and a correction unit that corrects a dot specified by the specification unit in the dot data. The image processing apparatus can output an image whose banding is unlikely to be recognized by suppressing image defect due to a change of dots accompanying liquid droplet interference.

A recording system records a multi-tone image with liquid droplets of different amount discharged from nozzles. This recording system has a first nozzle and a second nozzle. The minimum amount of a liquid droplet discharged from the first nozzle is larger than the minimum amount of a liquid droplet discharged from the second nozzle.

White-balance is improved when printing on colored media, while minimizing the time and use of costly materials required by present approaches. In an embodiment, the typical solid white fill or background layer is altered by including in the white layer one or more of the other colors already available in the printer to shade this layer. Thus, a small amount of cyan, for example, helps balance a pink-ish (red) media; yellow is used for blue media; and magenta is used for green media; as well as combinations thereof. A combination of transparent process inks and opaque white helps to maintain brightness (luminosity).

The present invention discharges ink from a plurality of inkjet heads and is used when performing drive whereby one droplet or a plurality of droplets are discharged onto and united on one pixel. A drive signal includes a drive waveform comprising N number (N being an integer of at least 2) of drive waveform elements and is configured so as to fulfil the relationship 1.1 Tc≤Ts≤1.4 Tc, when Tc is the natural vibration cycle determined from the inkjet head structure and Ts is the time from the start point of the drive waveform to the start point of the subsequent drive waveform. As a result, velocity deviation caused by the resonant frequency of a piezoelectric actuator driving the inkjet head can be suppressed when driving an inkjet head using multiple gradations.

Provided is an inkjet recording apparatus including: a nozzle configured to eject droplets including a first droplet and a second droplet larger than the first droplet; a moving mechanism that moves a sheet relative to the nozzle; and a processor configured to generate ejection data for the droplets, the ejection data corresponding to a dot image formed by ejecting the droplets from the nozzle on the sheet moved relatively to the nozzle by the moving mechanism, wherein the processor is configured to replace the second droplet for a pixel of interest in an original ejection data for generating the ejection data with the first droplet when the droplets are not ejected for a pixels in a row after the pixel of interest to generate the ejection data, where a is an integer of 2 or more.