Abstract: A method and apparatus for reducing intercolor bleed to improve print quality is provided. This technique includes the detection of an edge between a black portion color portion of an image to be printed, the edge being disposed in a region of color pixels and black pixels to be printed in a first configuration of drops, modifying the first configuration of drops to obtain a second configuration of drops, and printing the image by ejecting the drops from a printhead based on the second configuration.

Abstract: An ink jet printer has a roofshooter type printhead with first and second aligned nozzle arrays that ejects ink droplets onto a recording medium in a complete image swath during a single pass. The ink droplets from the first array of nozzles print selected pixels of an image in each line of pixels on the recording medium, and the ink droplets from the second array of nozzles print the remaining pixels of the image in each line of pixels not printed by the first array of nozzles, thereby providing a printhead capable of complementary printing of a complete image swath in a single pass that eliminates the signature effect in ink jet printing.

Abstract: The method of the present invention involves first estimating the common gamut of the colors that this printer is expected to reproduce. Two color test targets are defined, each containing a wide range of color patches spanning color space. Preferably comprising color patches which are expected to be outside the gamut of the printer as well as color patches expected to be within the gamut of the printer. The left-to-right test target is printed in single-pass, uni-directional print mode, (printing on left-to-right scans only) and a color calibration table for left-to-right printing is generated. The right-to-left test target is printed in single-pass, unidirectional print mode, (printing on right-to-left scans only) and a color calibration table specific for right-to-left printing is generated. The next step of the present invention involves determining the mathematical intersection of the gamuts produced by printing in left-to-right mode only and by printing in right-to-left mode only.