Facsimile and static presentation processing – Static presentation processing – Detail of medium positioning
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-26
2004-05-18
Garcia, Gabriel (Department: 2624)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Static presentation processing
Detail of medium positioning
C358S001900
Reexamination Certificate
active
06738151
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a distributed processing system to which a plurality of image information supplying apparatuses such as a personal computer (which will be hereinafter referred to as a PC—Personal Computer—) or a digital camera and a plurality of image forming apparatuses such as a color plain paper copy machine (which will be hereinafter referred to as a PPC—Plane Paper Copy machine—) or a printer are connected and which is provided with a distributed processing server for executing load distribution of jobs, and more particularly to a distributed processing system capable of efficiently forming images at a high speed even if color reproduction capabilities of respective image forming apparatuses connected to this system are different from each other.
In regard to a problem of management of colors in the field of image forming techniques such as printing or copying, a property of human visual sense to colors must be first taken into consideration. “Color management!” by Toru Kasai describes this management of colors (color management) as follows.
“A human eye has a cone cell sensitive to red, green and blue. Quantifying the stimulation given to each cell results in XYZ.
The value of XYZ can be used to represent all the colors seen by a human being as numerical values, but such values vary in accordance with a change in brightness of illumination light even if the same color is seen. “A color of an object” can not be represented in this way.
Thus, in order to represent a color of an object which can not be indicated by XYZ, a numerical quantity of lower case xy is used. This is a value which performs notation by using a ratio which becomes 1 by summing up XYZ and in which z is omitted. When a graph is made by using this numerical value, a CIE xy chromaticity diagram can be obtained.
With the CIE xy chromaticity diagram, it can be known that what kind of color rendering range (capability for reproducing colors) an apparatus for representing colors has. For example, a monitor and an offset printer have different color rendering ranges. It can be said that color matching by using a color management system (CMS) is a function for conveniently making these different color rendering ranges consistent with each other.”
As similar to the above-described CIE xy chromaticity diagram, the color range of visible light rays which can be reproduced by a human eye greatly exceeds a region which can be reproduced by an RGB (red-Red, green-Green, blue-Blue) model or a CMYK (cyan-Cyan, magenta-Magenta, yellow-Yellow, black-Black) model. The region of colors which can be reproduced by the RGB model and the CMYK model do not completely coincide with each other. Since the RGB and the CMYK are not completely compatible with each other, different colors may be reproduced at an output device if these models remain unchanged.
For the purpose of adjusting a difference between output devices, there is adopted an interface for a color management system (ICM) which is called “ICM” in “Windows 98” and called “ColorSync” in “MacOS.” In this ICM, there is used a standard format called the “ICC profile” proposed by the international color consortium (ICC—International Color Consortium—). The ICC profile is a table indicating vales for conversion of a color model dependent on an apparatus and a color model independent on an apparatus. By using the ICC profile, the application reconverts a color processed in various input/output devices in order to transfer it to a different input/output device through a relay point with a device-dependent color space as a reference being used as a relay for conversion, thereby completing transfer of the color. Therefore, it is possible to absorb the inconformity of the reproducible color regions between the RGB model and the CMYK model to some degree.
Recently, a color printer of one-drum mode using an intermediate transfer medium has been spread, and the color/monochrome mixed printing environment has been regularized. The one-drum type color printer using the intermediate transfer medium, a print completion timing of a monochrome page is different from that of a color page because of the mechanism thereof. In case of the color printing, since toners for four colors of CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) are mounted for each one rotation, the drum makes four rotations until the printing is completed. In case of the monochrome printing, only one color of K (black) is used, and hence one revolution can suffice the drum until the printing is completed. According to this one-drum mode, the color printing requires the time which is four-fold of that of the monochrome printing even if the simple calculation is performed.
On the other hand, there is a color printer called a quadruple tandem. In the mechanism of the quadruple tandem, an exposure device and a developer are provided in each of the CMYK and drums for four of the CMYK are linearly arranged. As a result, the color printing can be performed by one pass and, when compared with the one-drum mode, it is characterized in that only one revolution of the drum is enough during the color printing and the color printing can be executed at a high speed.
In the recent circumstances of applications, opportunities for processing colors of, e.g., browsers or PDF files are increasing due to spread of integrative business applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and others and spread of the internet, and the environment where colors are processed together with conventional monochrome documents has been realized. For example, this is true to a business document and the like in which a descriptive document is represented in monochrome pages while statistics/graphs are represented in color pages and which deals with them as one document.
Based on these circumstances, a tandem copy/tandem print has been recently proposed. This tandem print/tandem copy mode distributes and processes print jobs/copy jobs in order to shorten the time until the end of the jobs. The structure takes such a form as that at least two color printing devices are connected to the distributed processing server. Performing the distributed processing on a print job generated by a print command from a PC with two copying machines by a client is called the “tandem print.” Further, distributing a copy job to be processed in two copying machines is called the “tandem copy.”
The conventional job distribution system has distributed a job to color printing devices having different engine characteristics simply every unit of copies. In addition, there is a system which determines a color/monochrome page in a print job in units of a job distribution server, memorizes to which color printer the color page is job-distributed, and transmits a job in a page unit to a printer which is equal to the color printer to which the previous transmission was made when that job has a turn in order to constantly perform output with the same coloring (see Japanese patent application laid-open No. 198533-1998).
However, the above-described prior art has the following problems.
In general, the color printer has a different color rendering range depending on an engine to be used. In cases where the different color printers are connected to the distribution server to carry out the tandem print/copy, their color rendering ranges differ from each other because of different engine characteristics of the respective color printers and, for example, when the distribution server simply carries out the job distribution in units of copies, there occurs a problem such that the colorings of output results are different from each other.
Moreover, in order to solve the above-described problem as in the Japanese patent application laid-open No. 198533-1998, there is a method in which the color printer to which a color page job was job-distributed is previously memorized in order to output with the same coloring and the job is transmitted to the printer equal to the color printer to which the previous transmission was made when that job has a turn in
Foley & Lardner LLP
Garcia Gabriel
Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
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