Psychophysical investigation of the effect of coring on perceived toner scatter

bstract. The use of color electrophotographic (EP) laser printing ystems is growing because of their declining cost. Thus, the print uality of color EP laser printers has become increasingly important. ince text and lines are indispensable to print quality, many studies ave proposed methods for measuring these print quality attributes. oner scatter caused by toner overdevelopment in color EP laser rinters can significantly impact print quality. A conventional aproach to reduce toner overdevelopment is to restrict the color amut of printers. However, this can result in undesired color shifts nd the introduction of halftone texture. Coring, defined as a proess where the colorant level is reduced in the interior of text or haracters, is a remedy for these shortcomings. The desired amount f reduction for coring depends on line width and overall nominal olorant level. In previous work, these amounts were chosen on the asis of data on the perception of edge blur obtained from softcopy imulation of the blurring. We describe psychophysical studies to irectly establish optimal coring values as a function of line width nd nominal colorant level. For each line width and nominal colorant evel, this is done by asking human subjects to choose the minimum mount of coring that is necessary to eliminate the perception of oner scatter. We conduct four separate psychophysical studies to ddress different aspects of this question. © 2010 SPIE and S&T. DOI: 10.1117/1.3267102