Method of compensating for skewed printing in an ink jet printer

Abstract

A method of printing with an ink jet printer compensates for skewed printing on a print medium. An image area is defined on the print medium which has a plurality of rows of pixel locations and a plurality of columns of pixel locations. A printhead includes a plurality of vertically adjacent ink emitting orifices arranged in an array having a height. The printhead is scanned during first and second scans across the print medium in directions transverse to the advance direction. The ink is jetted onto the print medium from the ink emitting orifices during the first and second scans at selected ink dot placement locations generally corresponding to one of the columns of pixel locations. An offset is determined in a transverse direction between a bottom ink dot placement location associated with the first scan and a top ink dot placement location associated with the second scan. The array of ink emitting orifices is segmented into at least two vertically adjacent segments of ink emitting orifices. The ink dot placement locations associated with at least one of the segments is shifted in a direction transverse to the advance direction a distance which is dependent upon the determined offset. The ink dot placement locations associated with at least one other of the segments remains unchanged. Printing on the print medium is carried out using the shifted ink dot placement locations.