Radiation imagery chemistry: process – composition – or product th – Color imaging process – Laser or radiation exposure other than visible light
Reexamination Certificate
2000-11-03
2003-01-07
Schilling, Richard L. (Department: 1752)
Radiation imagery chemistry: process, composition, or product th
Color imaging process
Laser or radiation exposure other than visible light
C430S503000, C430S505000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06503695
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material and an image forming method using the light-sensitive material suitable for reproducing an image according to digital image information or a negative image formed on a negative film.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Recently, a chance of handling an image in a form of digital data is rapidly increased depending on the rising of processing ability of computer or the progress of network technology. The image information digitized by a scanner can be easily processed or edited by a computer. Moreover, another data such as a character or an illustration can be easily added to the digitized image information. The material for making a hard copy according to the digitized image information includes, for example, a sublimation-type thermal transfer printing material, a thermal fusion transfer printing material, an ink-jet printing material, a static transfer printing material, a thermo-autochrome printing material and silver halide photographic material are usable. Among them, the silver halide color photographic material, hereinafter simply referred to a light-sensitive material, is frequently used for making a high quality hard copy since the light-sensitive material is excellent in the characteristics such as the high sensitivity, gradation and image storage ability, compared with the other printing materials.
The image information digitized by a scanner can be easily processed or edited by a computer. Moreover, another data such as a character or an illustration can be easily added to the digitized image information. Accordingly, a picture including a photographic image such as a portrait, scene and still life, hereinafter referred to a picture image, and a character image, particularly a fine and small black character image, is frequently handled. It is necessary, therefore, in the image output according to the digital data to simultaneously-satisfy two requirements of that the picture image is naturally reproduced and the character image is reproduced with no blur.
Furthermore, the resolving power of an image-input apparatus such as a digital still camera or a film scanner is considerably risen in recent some years. Depending on such the situation, rising of the resolving power of an output apparatus or the digital exposing apparatus is investigated for making a print using the high quality image data obtained by such the image-input apparatus.
A light beam scanning method has been known as one of methods generally used for digital exposing. In this instance a method exposing with overlapping the main scanning line, i.e., raster, at certain ratio is known in order to reduce generation of scanning noise line by the disclosure of Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection, hereinafter referred to JP O.P.I., No. 5-19423, JP O.P.I., No. 6-295033 etc. In this method, it is effective that the diameter of the light beam applied for exposure is generally reduced in order to improve high resolving power, and it enables to display fine line pattern particularly such as character image clearer more in detail. In such the case, the transportation pitch of the light beam in the direction of scanning, the main scanning direction, and that of the sub-scanning direction being at right angles with the main scanning direction are reduced when the overlapping ratio of the adjacent light beams or the beam multiplicity is constantly maintained, the time for exposing tends to be prolonged and productivity tends to deteriorate since transportation pith of scanning direction of beam (main scanning direction) and vertical scanning direction (sub scanning direction) must be reduced. On the other hand, when the light beam diameter is only reduced while the transportation pitch in the subscanning direction is maintained at constant, beam multiplicity is reduced and therefore a periodical scanning noise line tends to be formed in an area in which a constant density data are continued some degree in particular it is difficult to reproduce the image having many uniform density portion such as illustration with high quality. Consequently, the high image quality reproducing fine line image and image having uniform density are difficultly compatible and further maintaining the high productivity is difficult in the digital exposing apparatus, and an improvement on that is demanded.
As one of method to improving character image quality JP O.P.I., No. 10-20460 describes a method for rising the character image quality by using a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material having a specific ratio of the point gamma value at a certain density obtained by an exposure time of 0.1 seconds to that obtained by an exposure time of 10
−4
seconds. Though the method improves the character image quality in both of plane exposure and scanning exposure, the JP O.P.I. mentioned above does not describe improving the exposure line noise at the same density area which tends to generate when the subscanning rate is improved for high productivity that is transportation pitch is made large. U.S. Pat. No. 5,744,287 describes a method to improve the image sharpness at a high sensitivity area by adjusting the maximum gamma value and the fill-in D
max
formed by the digital exposure, however it does not describe improving the exposure line noise at the same density area which tends to generate when the subscanning rate is improved for high productivity that is transportation pitch is made large. By preparing the light sensitive material so as to have high fill-in D
max
, though a preferable image having high clearance is obtained in a void image which has fine pattern with low density in a high density background, the reproduction is not always improved in an image with black characters which has a fine pattern with high density in low density background. The reason, which is not clarified in detail, is possibly assumed as follows. It is general to employ a method overlapping the light beams in certain ratio in order to reduce the scanning line noise at uniform density area in scanning exposure. Therefore, in fill-in D
max
, which is obtained by the out-put result of void fine line of one or two pixels at the uniform density area, void fine line part is not exposed at all, but is assumed to be effected the blur of light beam of neighboring main scanning line. Further, it is known that light scattering phenomena within support, which is called piping, in the reflective support such as RC paper, and in this instance, the void fine line area is also assumed to be affected by blur of the light beam of exposure of main scanning line apart from several lines. Though usually only such weak light scarcely affects image formation, there may be a possibility that it affects image formation as known subsidiary exposing effect when the exposure is superposed. On the other hand, it is assumed that improvement of reproduction at void fine line area is not always reflected since exposure of neighboring main scanning line does not affect image in case that black fine lines in white background such as black characters are out put. Consequently further improvement is demanded because it is not insufficient to make compatible of reproduction of image with-fine lines area such as black characters and uniform density area by adjusting the fill-in D
max
to desirable value.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the invention is to provide a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material and a image forming method by which the reproducibility is risen and the scanning ununiformity of image is inhibited, a beautiful printed image can be obtained independently on the kind of digital exposing apparatus, and a beautiful printed image can be obtained in both cases of the exposure according to the digital image information and the exposure through a negative film.
The present invention and the embodiments of the invention are described below.
A silver halide color photographic light-Sensitive material comprising a support
Ito Junji
Miyazawa Kazuhiro
Konica Corporation
Schilling Richard L.
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