Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Yasunobu Takagi

Toshihito Kamei

Takashi Kimura

Hiroyuki Sugiyama

Shinya Tanaka

Taku Satoh

Takayuki Ito

Masakazu Yoshida

Tomoko Takahashi

Masanori Hirano

Masahiko Shakuto

Yoshiaki Hoshino

Ryota Kidera

Yoshimi Nemoto

Tatsumi Yamada

Yoshinori Nakagawa

Makoto Tanaka

Yoichi Ito

Naohiro Toda

Taichi Urayama

Ryusuke Mase

Yoshihisa Ohta

Naoyuki Ozaki

Shinichi Hatanaka

Tetsuto Ueda

Kenichi Taguma

Shotaro Hoshi

Taito Omura

Shotaro Ueda

Kaoru Sakamoto

Ryoh Yokoyama

A liquid discharge apparatus includes a liquid discharge head and processing circuitry. The liquid discharge head is configured to discharge, to a foamable medium, liquid having a function of suppressing foaming of the medium to form irregularities. The processing circuitry is configured to hold condition information indicating a content defined by each of a plurality of conditions related to image formation at a time when the liquid forms a predetermined pattern image on the medium; and generate and output, for each condition of the plurality of conditions, an evaluation medium on which irregularities corresponding to the predetermined pattern image formed according to the condition are formed.

Liquid discharge apparatus

A liquid discharge device includes: a liquid discharge head; a nozzle array disposed on the head in a conveyance direction; a movement driver that moves the head to discharge liquid from the nozzle array in a direction perpendicular to the conveyance direction in a reciprocating manner; a discharge driver that causes the head to discharge the liquid; a conveyor that conveys an object; and a controller that acquires an amount of conveyance of the object by the conveyor over a period during which the head moves from a predetermined position to a position where the head is to discharge the liquid to a target pixel, and determines, on which reciprocating travelling of the head to discharge the liquid and from which nozzle in the nozzle array to discharge the liquid, based on the amount of conveyance.

Liquid discharge device, liquid discharge control method, and recording medium

A liquid discharging device detects, among a plurality of nozzles of a liquid discharging head, a normal-discharging nozzle and a false-discharging nozzle, selects whether to recover discharging performance of the false-discharging nozzle by a cleaner or to compensate deterioration in an image caused by the false-discharging nozzle by a compensator using the normal-discharging nozzle according to the detected number of consecutive false-discharging nozzles, and performs operation according to the selection.

Liquid discharging device, control apparatus for liquid discharging device, and method of controlling liquid discharging device

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming unit having at least two nozzle lines each having multiple nozzles to discharge different color droplets; a carriage that carries the image forming unit and is configured to reciprocate in the moving direction crossing an arrangement direction of the nozzles; and a control device to control dual-directional printing to form an image using the at least two nozzle lines in an outward and a return of the carriage. The control device executes color difference handling print control for discharging the different color droplets by using, of each of the nozzles in the at least two nozzle lines, the nozzles located at different positions in the arrangement direction of the nozzles while not overlapping in the moving direction of the carriage.

Image forming apparatus, information processing device, and image forming method

An image forming apparatus includes an image bearer rotating in a first direction while bearing a toner image thereon in a normal image forming operation; a toner image forming device to form the toner image on the image bearer; a transferring device to transfer the toner image to a recording medium eventually; a cleaning blade to block toner remaining on image bearer without being transferred; and a controller. The controller controls the image bearer to perform an inverse rotation operation in which the image bearer rotates in a second direction opposite to the first direction after controlling the toner image forming device to perform a special image forming operation such that the amount of toner input to the cleaning blade in the special image forming operation is greater than the amount of toner input to the cleaning blade in the normal image forming operation, and then stopping the image bearer.

Image forming apparatus and image forming method that remove toner from a cleaning blade for an image bearer by inversely rotating the image bearer

An image forming apparatus includes a driving device, a transfer body, a toner detector, an error notification device, and a controller. The toner detector detects, at a preparation running and while the driving device drives a latent image bearer, one of a toner adhesion amount at a background portion of the latent image bearer and a toner adhesion amount at a background corresponding region of a transfer body. The error notification device notifies a user of an error with the toner adhesion being equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value. The driving device stops only a developer bearer after driving both the latent image bearer and the developer bearer at the preparation running, but before a trailing edge of a detection target region of one of the background portion of the latent image bearer and the background corresponding region advances to an opposite position to the toner detector.

Image forming apparatus

Disclosed is an image forming apparatus that includes a recording head for forming an image by discharging single color ink from plural nozzle sequences. The image forming apparatus includes a profile generating unit configured to generate a profile including discharging characteristics of the corresponding nozzle sequences and information indicating a positional relationship among the plural nozzle sequences, based on individual images of a predetermined pattern that have been formed by the corresponding nozzle sequences and images that have been formed by the nozzle sequences; and a driving condition determination unit configured to determine drive conditions of the corresponding nozzle sequences by referring to the profile.

Image forming apparatus, image correction method, and non-transitory computer readable recording medium storing image correction program

An image processing method includes dividing a first image into regions according to content of the first image; generating a second image by converting a gradation of pixels of the first image into a gradation of pixels expressible in an image forming apparatus for each region; generating a piece of simulation information of a result of the image forming/outputting process based on the second image and nozzle characteristic information of the image forming apparatus; calculating an error between the first image and a third image for each of the regions, the third image being obtained by converting the piece of simulation information with the gradation of pixels of the first image; and deciding one of the second images as rendering information used to cause the image forming apparatus to perform an image forming/outputting process, based on the calculated errors between the first image and the third images.

Image processing method, computer-readable storage medium, and information processing apparatus for determining rendering information based on calculated errors between images

An image forming apparatus that performs correction to make gradation values adding both of two head areas (A+C, B+D) approximately equal. An area whose density is the lowest is set as a target density. Assuming densities for head areas A=70, B=100, C=40, D=90, head areas B and D are corrected with correction amount that &#x394;B become equal to &#x394;D (&#x394;B=&#x394;D=40) in accordance with target value (A+C=100).

Image forming apparatus, image forming method, and recording medium storing a program

A method including the steps of obtaining an original image, generating a converted image by converting a gradation of a pixel of the original image into a prescribed gradations for an image forming apparatus to express, outputting a dot pattern image through a nozzle based on a predetermined dot pattern signal, generating nozzle characteristic information of the nozzle based on the dot pattern image, generating simulation information based on the converted image and the nozzle characteristic information, generating converted simulation information by converting the simulation information to the same gradation as that of the pixel of the original image, comparing the converted simulation information with the original image, and calculating an error between the original image and the converted simulation information.

Image processing method, image processing program, and information processing apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes a recording head including a plurality of nozzles for ejecting recording liquid to perform image formation on a recording medium; and a correcting unit. The correcting unit is configured to divide the recording head by different division patterns each indicating that the recording head is divided into a plurality of segments by at least one different dividing point, correct input and output characteristics for each of the segments in each division pattern to calculate correction effect of the each division pattern, and determine one of the division patterns based on the calculated correction effects of the division patterns as a specified division pattern to correct input and output characteristics of the recording head.

Image forming apparatus, image correcting method, and computer-readable storage medium

An image forming apparatus includes a joint head in which a plurality of heads, each having a plurality of nozzles, are arranged in a nozzle arranging direction, and end portions of the heads adjacent to each other overlap, an overlap processing unit that distributes recording dot pattern data used for forming dots by using nozzles of an overlapping portion of the heads out of recording dot pattern data to the nozzles of the recording head adjacent to each other, a first tone correcting unit that performs tone correction, by a first correction characteristic, on recording dot pattern data using the nozzles other than the overlapping portion, and a second tone correcting unit that performs tone correction by a second correction characteristic on recording dot pattern data by using the nozzles of the overlapping portion.

Image forming apparatus, method of processing image, and computer-readable recording medium

A disclosed image processing apparatus includes an adjusting unit configured to convert input image data into image formation data, an arithmetic unit configured to calculate an image formation ink cost based on the converted image formation data, and a determining unit configured to compare the calculated image formation ink cost with a black-and-white image formation ink cost, wherein the calculated image formation ink cost is fixed based on a determination result of the first determining unit.

Image processing apparatus, image processing method, and recording medium

An image forming method includes discharging a droplet of a recording fluid via nozzles of a recording head onto a print medium; performing a main scan in which the print medium is scanned in a main scan direction; performing a sub-scan in which the print medium is scanned in a sub-scan direction; determining an overlap region in an image region that is formed by a single main scan; and performing an overlap control by forming an image in the overlap region through a plurality of main scans while the print medium is moved in the sub-scan direction by a feed amount L, wherein L=(n&#x2212;x)d&#x2212;md, where n is a number of the nozzles in the recording head; x is a number of the nozzles in the overlap region; d is a nozzle pitch; and m is a feed correcting coefficient (0&#x3c;m&#x3c;1).

Image forming method and image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus performs a 1-pass recording by a single main scan with respect to a recording medium by a nozzle group including different overlapping nozzles that scan the same overlapping region on the recording medium to record dots. Alternatively, a multi-pass recording is performed by a plurality of main scans with respect to the overlapping region by the same nozzle group or by different nozzle groups. The recording in a central portion of the overlapping region is performed by placing emphasis on the succession or continuity of the dots, while the recording in boundary portions of the overlapping region is performed by placing emphasis on the scattering of the dots.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Yasunobu Takagi