Mid Sweden University

We propose expanding the Murray-Davies formula by adding the effect of edges of solid inks in a halftoned image. The expanded formula takes into account the spectral reflectance of paper white, full tone ink and mixed area scaled by the fractional area coverages. Here, mixed area mainly refers to the edge of an inked dot where the density is very low, and lateral exchange of photons can occur. Also, in such area the paper micro components may have higher scattering power than ink, especially, in uncoated paper. Our methodology uses cyan, magenta and yellow separation ramps printed on different papers by impact and non-impact based printing technologies. The samples include both frequency and amplitude modulation halftoning methods of various print resolutions. Based on pixel values, the captured microscale halftoned image is divided into three categories: solid ink, mixed area, and unprinted paper between the dots. The segmented images are then used to measure the fractional area coverage that the model receives as parameters. We have derived the characteristic reflectance spectrum of mixed area by rearranging the expanded formula and replacing the predicted term with the measured value using half of the maximum colorant coverage. Performance has clearly improved over the Murray-Davies model with and without dot gain compensation, more importantly, preserving the linear additivity of reflectance of the classical physics-based model.