Beyond Density and Color: Print Quality Measurement Using a New Handheld Instrument

Good print quality is the result of achieving high quality for a large number of attributes including color (color gamut and reproduction accuracy), density, tonal quality (tone reproduction and details in highlight, shadow and mid-tone), gloss, line quality (width, blurriness, raggedness,), text quality, adjacency (e.g. inter-color bleed), micro-uniformity (graininess), macro-uniformity (mottle), effective resolution (MTF), and many others. While for many people in the digital printing world, good print quality is synonymous with accurate reproduction of color, it is by no means the only attribute affecting the perception of print quality. One reason why the quantification of most print quality attributes other than color is neglected has been the lack of convenient instrumentation for objective evaluation of these attributes. In this paper, we will introduce a novel handheld instrument that is capable of measuring a wide range of print quality attributes. We will provide examples of many print quality defects common in digital “photo” printing such as ink coalescence, graininess and mottle, inter-color bleed, misdirected jets, satellites, etc. and show how these defects can be quantified quickly, objectively and reliably.