Facsimile and static presentation processing – Static presentation processing – Attribute control
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-29
2002-10-01
Coles, Edward (Department: 2622)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Static presentation processing
Attribute control
C358S502000, C358S518000, C358S515000, C358S520000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06459501
ABSTRACT:
FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT
Not applicable.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to the reproduction or printing of monochrome images; more particularly, to a colorant set using at least three tinted gray colorants. The colorant set may be employed as dyes, inks, toners and the like.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
I. Definitions
For clarity and consistency, the following working definitions are presented for many of the terms that are used herein:
Colorant set: a group of two, three, four, or more colorants used as a major ingredient or component of a system for creating images. Colorant sets include colorants that are described as or made from: dyes, pigments, inks, toners, etc. In some cases the terms color or ink are used herein to mean either the same thing as colorant, or a subset of the meaning of the term colorant.
Monochrome: a black and white or nearly black and white type of image or graphic. All black and white images in printed form have some color, however slight. Some color images happen to have so little color in them that they are essentially monochrome, and indeed there is a continuum of imagery in the world that spans a very wide range of overall chroma (colorfulness). However, there is a broad and obvious difference between the vast majority of images and graphics that are considered to be color images and the vast majority of images and graphics that are considered to be monochrome. In one common example, if an image originated on black and white photographic film, the image is regarded as monochrome in printed form in nearly all cases, even though all prints or other realized versions of the image actually have some color, however slight.
Gamut: the range of colors that a given printing system can print (or display), including all colors and tones from the darkest black to the whitest white.
Large-Gamut: a prior art gamut such as that of a typical device used for printing color images, including printing presses, inkjet printers, dye sublimation printers, thermal wax transfer printers, laser ablation printers, off-press proofing systems, laser/silver halide photographic printers, gelatin pigment transfer systems, color toner laser printers, and the like.
Small-Gamut: a novel gamut that falls within the bounds of this invention which is much smaller than a typical large-gamut in terms of the chroma (color saturation), but is not smaller in terms of the dynamic range (contrast between black and white)
Color Management: an automated system of processes and tools for digital imaging that perform the task of making colors look similar when moved from one device to another. Examples include making an image appear very similar on a monitor to its original appearance in a transparency or print that has been scanned, and making a digitally rendered image in printed form appear similar to the same image when viewed on a computer monitor.
C.I.E.: Acronym for the French name of the International Commission on Illumination. The C.I.E. establishes internationally-agreed upon standard mathematical models for describing all the colors that a typical human can see.
C.I.E. L*a*b*: one of the mathematical models for describing all the colors that a typical human can see. It has become an international standard, and the one that is most widely utilized in color management. It is referred to as Lab or L*a*b* in this application.
LCH: another mathematical model for describing all the colors that a typical human can see, which model is derived directly from C.I.E. L*a*b*. L (Lightness) in LCH equals L* in Lab. C (Chroma) is computed by taking the square root of the sum of the squares of a* and b* (thus by using the Pythagorean Theorem, Chroma is a measure of the distance from gray, having a* and b* values of zero, to any non-gray color coordinates in any given L* plane of Lab space). Chroma is the measure of colorfulness of a color in LCH. H is the hue angle, between 0° and 360° (360° is equal to 0°), where 0° equals a magenta-red hue, 90° is a yellow hue, 180° is a bluish green hue, 270° is a royal blue hue, etc.
Chroma: the measure of colorfulness, or saturation, of a color in the LCH color space, as defined in the previous paragraph.
Hue or Hue Angle: different hues include red, orange, yellow, green, blue-green, blue, and violet. The hue angle of a color is the value in degrees between zero and 360 that identifies the hue of a color in various color spaces including CIE L*a*b* and LCH.
ICC: the International Color Consortium is a group of companies involved in imaging, which group convenes for the purpose of creating and refining standards for the mechanisms of color management. The ICC was founded mainly in order to create a universal file architecture for device profiles used in color management. Its work has built a foundation for successful color management which uses tools from more than a single provider, and has hugely improved the outlook for color management being used successfully, since no single provider of tools ever has been able to provide all the tools necessary for more than a handful of digital imaging workflows.
Imaging: the use of a wide range of tools to create, copy, process, archive, transmit, publish, print, scan, etc., images with digital and analog systems
Workflow: a chosen sequence of tools and steps for carrying out a given task. Often many different workflows are possible for a digital imaging task.
Profile: a discrete computer file containing a table or tables that relate device-specific color numbers to device-independent, i.e. absolute, color numbers (CIE color space numbers such as Lab numbers) for a given device in a given state (i.e. calibrated in a given way or printing in a given way with a given colorant set, etc.) An ICC profile is a device profile in the standard ICC format that can make it possible for color management to be performed using the profiled device.
Device-specific or device-dependent color numbers: several systems exist for specifying colors that are displayed on (in the case of a computer monitor), or seen by (in the case of a scanner or digital camera), or printed by (in the case of a printing device) a digital imaging hardware device. These systems include RGB (typically using a scale of 256 levels of color for each channel ranging from a value of zero to a value of 255), CMYK (typically using a scale of 256 levels of color for each channel ranging from a value of zero percent to 100 percent), HSV, HSL, CMYKOG, etc. All device-specific color numbers can only be thought of as producing (or showing or otherwise relating to) a particular, exact color in the context of a given device. For example, the color number (255, 0, 0), bright red in RGB space, will produce a different actual color on each RGB device, albeit a relatively bright red in each case. To accurately specify the actual color produced, it is necessary to use device-independent numbers to specify an absolute red that equals the particular red produced on or seen by any given device when the number (255, 0, 0) is displayed or printed or results when making a scan.
Device-independent color numbers: the CIE standard color models for describing color are device-independent, because they describe the appearance, under standard viewing conditions to a standard human observer, of a color in absolute terms. The device-independent color numbers cannot be fed directly to a digital color device, but they perform the vital role in color management of the universal color language. Once the device-dependent color numbers of any given device are accurately related to device-independent numbers of one of the CIE color spaces (such as Lab) in a table or tables contained in a device profile, the colors on one device can be related to the colors on any other device for which one also has an accurate profile. Device color number (a, b, c) of device A equal the absolute CIE color number equal the device color number (x, y, z) of device B.
GCR: gray component replacement describes the practice of using a relatively high proportion of black ink to create a c
Coles Edward
Mitchell Monica J.
White Douglas E.
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