Measurement and compensation of printer modulation transfer function

bstract. The capacity of a printing system to accurately reproduce etails has an impact on the quality of printed images. The ability of system to reproduce details is captured in its modulation transfer unction (MTF). In the first part of this work, we compare three exsting methods to measure the MTF of a printing system. After a horough investigation, we select the method from Jang and Alleach and propose to modify it. We demonstrate that our proposed odification improves the measurement precision and the simplicity f implementation. Then we discuss the advantages and drawbacks f the different methods depending on the intended usage of the TF and why Jang and Allebach’s method best matches our needs. n the second part, we propose to improve the quality of printed mages by compensating for the MTF of the printing system. The TF is adaptively compensated in the Fourier domain, depending oth on frequency and local mean values. Results of a category udgment experiment show significant improvement as the printed TF-compensated images obtain the best scores. © 2010 SPIE and S&T. DOI: 10.1117/1.3272958