Hewlett-Packard Company

Lluis Vinals

Lawrence H White

Josep Maria Serra

Salvador Sanchez

Multiple-pass printing is performed with no print medium advance between selected pairs of printing passes. In some embodiments, an entire printing operation ( ) can be conducted in one multiple-pass mode. Alternatively, a switch from n-pass to m-pass mode may occur during a printing operation ( ) but with a uniform print medium advance throughout. Different printing masks are used for the different stages.

Printing with multiple passes

An inkjet printer prints swaths which overlap by, typically, one eighth of their width at each edge, each edge region having a reduced print density so that the combined density of the overlapping regions matches or exceeds that of non-overlapping regions. In a first embodiment, each edge region is printed with 50% printing density. In a second embodiment, the printing mask is modified so that each edge region comprises two sub-regions with differing print densities, e.g. a first outer sub-region with a printing density of 15% and a second sub-region with a printing density of 85%. In a third embodiment only one edge region has a reduced print density and comprises 3 sub-regions with different print densities, e.g. a first sub-region with a printing density of 6.75%, a second one with a printing density of 12.5% and a third one with a printing density of 25%.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

Lluis Vinals