The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 24, 2002
Filed:
Jan. 29, 2001
Matthew G Lopez, Escondido, CA (US);
Jason R Arbeiter, Poway, CA (US);
Michael S Gray, Encinitas, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A swath printing system and pixel depletion methods compensate for the effects of defective printing elements by adjusting the pixel depletion mask used during printing to minimize the amount and location of extraneous unprinted spaces caused by the defective printing elements. A printing element quality detector determines which printing elements are functional and which are defective. Based on this information, an image processor then selects or constructs a depletion mask having depleted pixel positions chosen to reduce the adverse effects on print quality caused by the defective printing elements, thus maintaining high image quality for the printed output. Pixel depletion is preferably performed at the image pixel level, but can alternatively be performed at the color plane pixel level.