An intelligent color quality control method for digital printing

Abstract

It is well known that color toner is "notoriously unstable". Challenges designers and printers face are the difficulties in achieving accurate and consistent color print-outs using toner-based color copiers and laser printers due to inherent instabilities such as humidity changes, temperature fluctuations, variation and deterioration of toners and machine drift. This paper addresses these challenges by presenting a practical methodology enhancing the concept of color management for digital printing. Based on the methodology, an enabling technology, Focoltone Intelligent Color Calibration System (ICCS), has been developed. This technology is developed based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), it provides a novel method for comparing the printed colors against reference colors to generate color characteristics. The generated color characteristics represented using fuzzy logic and stored in a knowledge base, which can be presented to users in an understandable way, are useful for detecting color inconsistency in an automatic and intelligent manner. They can be used as a feedback to compensate colors by modifying an existing ICC profile to generate a better one in order to control the quality of the outputs of digital printing.