JP2010002947A - Information processor and program - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem wherein proper printing quality cannot be obtained as a whole, during a printing job, when each page has different features in printing jobs. <P>SOLUTION: As a printing quality setting, four of "priority on characters", "priority on photographs", "priority on graphics", and "automatic determination" are selectable by a UI part 111. When one among "priority on characters", "priority on photographs", and "priority on graphics" is selected, processing is performed by adapting drawing processing systems which correspond to the respective characteristics for all the pages. When "automatic determination" is selected, the trend for the kinds of drawing objects to be included by each page of a printing job is detected, and the image processing system corresponding to the tendency of the kind of the drawing object on the page is selected and drawing processing is carried out by the image processing system selected. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and a program.

  A program called a printer driver is generally used to control the formation of an image by an electrophotographic or liquid discharge recording type image forming apparatus such as a printer, a facsimile, a copying machine, a plotter, or a combination of these. The information processing apparatus on which the printer is installed generates print data and sets print conditions.

  As a conventional printer driver, when processing each drawing object of characters, photos, and graphics included in the user's print data, the optimum processing according to the characteristics of the print data is set as a setting item as a print quality setting, and the user There is already known a function that can be selected.

Also, as described in Patent Document 1, the characteristics of halftone screens such as graphics / characters, natural images, and computer graphics conflict in variable printing that synthesizes various images. In order to solve the problem that it is not possible to specify the optimal image formation for the print data, the print settings are attached to the form and the individual data to be inserted, and the output conditions that should be prioritized when compositing are set when outputting the master document. A configuration is known in which print settings that are optimal for document output after composition are generated according to priority conditions.
JP 2006-209389 A

  However, many users rarely change printer driver settings in accordance with print data, and are often used with default print quality settings. Therefore, even if print quality settings such as text priority, photo priority, text / graphic priority, etc. can be set according to the type of print data, it is rarely used and is optimal for print data that users want to print. There is a problem that there are many cases where the print result is not always good.

  Also, in print jobs, there are cases where the characteristics of each page are divided such that a certain page is written mainly in text, and a certain page is an entire image or a certain page is centered on a figure. The characteristics of halftone processing are contradictory between characters and figures and natural images and photographs. For this reason, if image processing to be applied such as “character priority”, “photo priority”, or “graphic priority” is uniquely determined for the entire print job as described above, the print job as a whole is of good quality. The result is not obtained. For this reason, it is necessary to take another effort such as separately reprinting pages with different characteristics after printing. Furthermore, when the features of the page are different between the front and back sides of double-sided printing, it is necessary to reprint the prints according to the respective features on each side, which is extremely troublesome.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and an object of the present invention is to easily obtain a print result with good print quality as a whole print job even when the characteristics of each page in the print job are different. And

In order to solve the above problems, an information processing apparatus according to the present invention provides:
Detecting means for detecting a tendency of the type of drawing object included in each page of the print job;
Means for selecting an image processing method in accordance with the tendency of the type of drawing object on the page;
Means for performing drawing processing by the selected image processing method;
Means for selecting to perform a drawing process by the selected image processing method as a print quality setting;
It was set as the structure equipped with.

  Here, the detection means may be configured to detect a tendency of the type of the drawing object based on an area occupied by the drawing object included in each page of the print job. In this case, the detection means may be configured to use the area of a rectangular area including characters for the character drawing object.

The program according to the present invention is:
Processing for detecting a tendency of the type of drawing object included in each page of the print job, selecting an image processing method according to the tendency of the type of drawing object on the page, and performing drawing processing by the selected image processing method When,
A process for enabling selection of a process for performing a drawing process with the selected image processing method as a print quality setting;
It was set as the structure which makes computer perform.

  According to the information processing apparatus and the program according to the present invention, the tendency of the type of drawing object included in each page of the print job is detected, and the image processing method corresponding to the tendency of the type of drawing object on the page is selected and selected. The processing to perform the drawing process using the image processing method can be selected as the print quality setting, so that even if the characteristics of each page in the print job are different, the entire print job can be done without user's trouble. Printing results can be easily obtained with good print quality.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. First, an information processing apparatus according to the present invention will be described with reference to the functional block diagram of FIG.
In the information processing apparatus 100, the output data of the application 101 is output via the spooler 102 provided by the OS or directly to the printer driver 103 which is a program according to the present invention.

  The printer driver 103 is referred to by a UI unit 111 that provides a user interface (UI) for controlling property screens, a drawing unit 112 that analyzes drawing objects and creates drawing data, a UI unit 111, and the drawing unit 112. And a data portion 113 in which various setting data (halftone screen data and the like) that the drawing unit 112 refers to when drawing is stored. The printer driver 103 outputs the rendered data to the spooler 102.

  The spooler 102 transmits the print data subjected to the drawing process to a printer 105 as an image forming apparatus.

  Next, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. The processing described in FIGS. 2 to 4 is performed by the printer driver.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing processing of output data of the application.
In this process, four types of print quality settings “character priority”, “photo printing”, “graphic priority”, and “automatic determination” can be selected by the UI unit 111, and “character priority”, “photo priority”, “ When any one of “graphic priority” is selected, a drawing processing method corresponding to each characteristic is applied to all pages to perform processing. On the other hand, when “automatic determination” is selected, as will be described later, the drawing object is examined before drawing for each page to check the tendency of the type of object on the page, The drawing processing method according to the above is automatically selected, and the image processing is performed by the selected drawing processing method.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing automatic determination drawing processing of output data of an application.
Here, in order to detect the tendency of the object type for each page, a counter A that stores the result of calculating the area of the graphic object, a counter B that stores the result of calculating the area of the image object, and the area of the character object The counter C that stores the result of calculating is used.

  In this drawing processing, the count values (total values) A, B, and C of the counters A, B, and C are initialized, and the tendency of the drawing objects for one page is checked. At this time, if the relationship between the total values A, B, and C is C ≧ A and C ≧ B, it is presumed that the sentence is the subject and the “character priority” drawing process is performed, and C ≧ A and C If B ≧ A and B ≧ C instead of ≧ B, it is assumed that the image is the subject, and “image priority” (photo priority) rendering processing is performed. If B ≧ A and B ≧ C, Then, it is assumed that the subject is a figure, and the "graphic priority" drawing process is performed. This is repeated for all the pages, and when the processing for all the pages is completed, the drawing processing is ended.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a check process of a drawing object tendency for one page of output data of an application.
Since the drawing of one drawing object requires the acquisition of the same object, if the drawing object is not a character or an image (graphic object), the area of the graphic object is calculated and the counter A is If it is an image object, the area of the image object is calculated and added to the counter B. If it is a character object, the area of the rectangle including the character object is calculated and added to the counter C.

  Note that the above-described addition processing of the counters A, B, and C may be performed either before or after the object is drawn. This process corresponds to detection means for detecting a tendency of the type of drawing object for each page of the print job.

  In this way, the tendency of the type of drawing object included in each page of the print job is detected, the image processing method corresponding to the tendency of the type of drawing object on the page is selected, and the drawing process is performed using the selected image processing method. Since the processing to be performed can be selected as the print quality setting, even if the characteristics of each page in the print job are different, the print result can be easily printed with good print quality without any user effort. Will be obtained.

  Specifically, the print job has different features for each page, such as a page centered on text, a page centered on an image, and a page centered on a figure. If there is no uniquely determined feature such as “photo priority” or “graphic priority”, the image processing method was previously determined for the entire print job, so good results could not be obtained for the entire print job. After printing is complete, it may be necessary to reprint a page with different characteristics as needed. Furthermore, if the features of the page differ between the front and back sides of double-sided printing, it was necessary to reprint each page with settings that match each feature, which was very cumbersome. On the other hand, according to the present invention, drawing can be performed with an appropriate image processing method adapted to each page without taking the above-described troubles, so that a high-quality print result can be obtained for the entire print job.

It is functional block explanatory drawing of the information processing apparatus which concerns on this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the process of the output data of an application. It is a flowchart which shows the automatic determination drawing process of the output data of an application. It is a flowchart which shows the check process of the tendency of the drawing object for 1 page of the output data of an application.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 100 ... Information processing apparatus 103 ... Printer driver 111 ... UI part 112 ... Drawing part 113 ... Data part

Claims (4)

Detecting means for detecting a tendency of the type of drawing object included in each page of the print job;
Means for selecting an image processing method in accordance with the tendency of the type of drawing object on the page;
Means for performing drawing processing by the selected image processing method;
Means for selecting to perform a drawing process by the selected image processing method as a print quality setting;
An information processing apparatus comprising:   The information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the detection unit detects a tendency of the type of the drawing object based on an area occupied by the drawing object included in each page of the print job.   The information processing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the detection unit uses an area of a rectangular region including a character for a character drawing object. Processing for detecting a tendency of the type of drawing object included in each page of the print job, selecting an image processing method according to the tendency of the type of drawing object on the page, and performing drawing processing by the selected image processing method When,
A process for enabling selection of a process for performing a drawing process using the selected image processing method as a print quality setting;
A program characterized by causing a computer to execute.

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