JP2006168099A - Recording apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem that when the recording data sent to a recording apparatus from a host are expressed by multiple value data of area gradation, in a constitution wherein after the multiple value data are converted to one bit data to be recorded or not, a thinned-out processing is performed, time is consumed for the thinned-out processing depending on capacity of the recording data, and speed-up for the processing is hardly performed. <P>SOLUTION: When the thinned-out processing of the recording data is performed, by referring a density table specified on every recording mode in advance, the thinned-out processing for optimizing adjustment of density and color tone is performed in accordance with a recording mode. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a recording control method for recording an image on a recording medium by a recording head, an apparatus and a recording apparatus for the recording control method, and a thinning-out method for multivalued image data.

In a recording apparatus that records images using a plurality of recording heads based on recording data sent from the host, the thinning process for changing the printing density and color tone prints the recording dots included in the recording data. It was only possible to convert it into 1-bit recording data represented by whether or not to perform (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
JP 2002-036524 A

  Conventionally, when recording data sent from a host is represented by multi-value data of area gradation, the multi-value data is converted into 1-bit data indicating whether to record or not, and then thinning processing is performed. I was going. In that case, depending on the capacity of the recording data, the time required for the thinning process increases, and the processing speed cannot be increased.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above conventional example. In the density adjustment function using the thinning process for the print data by using the present invention, whether or not the data for adjusting the print density is printed in units of one dot. Even in the case of multi-level data with various area gradations depending on the recording mode, the density and color tone can be adjusted optimally according to the recording mode by referring to the density table defined for each recording mode in advance. It is possible to provide a density adjustment function using a thinning process for performing.

  Also, by using the print density adjustment function described above, the joint streak correction process for reducing density unevenness that occurs at the print joint position is optimally performed for each recording mode without depending on the specific recording mode. Is possible. The joint streak correction process is a method in which dot count is performed on print data at a print joint position, a print data thinning level corresponding to the dot count value is set, and SMS thinning is performed. Conventionally, the data in the dot count area and the thinning area is binary data indicating whether or not each dot is hit. However, in the present invention, the dot count area and the thinning area have an area gradation. Even in the case of multi-value data indicated by, the density table prepared for each recording mode is referred to, the thinning rate is determined from the value corresponding to the dot count value of the area to be thinned, and the thinning level is determined. It is an object of the present invention to provide a recording control method and a recording apparatus capable of optimally performing streak correction processing for various recording modes by performing thinning processing.

  In order to solve the above-described problems, the present invention provides a recording device that records an image on a recording medium by a recording head based on recording data, and a storage unit that stores multi-valued image data to be recorded, and a thinning rate. A thinning holding means for holding thinned data, a table holding means for holding a density table that defines the density value of each pixel data of the multivalued image data stored in the storage means, and corresponding in the held density table It has a thinning means for thinning out the pixel data in comparison with the density value of each pixel data, and a generating means for generating print data based on the pixel data thinned out by the thinning means.

  According to the present invention, when the recording data is represented by area gradation multi-value data, the area gradation multi-value data corresponding to the recording mode is not converted into 1-bit data indicating whether to record the data. Thus, it is possible to perform a thinning process for adjusting the density and color tone.

  Details of the examples are described below.

  FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of the control portion of this embodiment. 1 is a host for sending control commands and control data, 2 is an I / F circuit for receiving data transmitted from the host 1, 3 is a CPU for controlling the entire apparatus, and 4 is a required work area. And a RAM for temporarily storing control data input from the host 1 via the interface circuit 2, and a ROM for 5, a program for operating the CPU 3, a head drive, a motor drive Etc. are stored in advance. Reference numeral 6 denotes an encoder circuit for detecting the position of the carriage based on the output of the encoder sensor 9 which is a carriage position detecting element. Reference numeral 7 denotes a control circuit for driving the recording head 11 and the head driver 10 by performing a thinning process in this embodiment, and reference numeral 8 denotes a drive circuit for driving the carriage motor 12 and the paper feed motor 13.

  FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating in more detail the circuit 7 that controls the thinning process shown in FIG. The recording data sent from the host is temporarily stored in the image data storage memory 14, and the thinning calculation circuit 16 refers to the stored recording data with reference to the density table in which the density value is defined for each recording mode. Then, the thinning process is executed with the optimum value, and the recording data stored in the original image data storage memory 14 is replaced. Then, it is sent to the image recording unit 17 for printing.

  FIG. 3 is a diagram showing the correspondence between the recording data described in this embodiment and the recording dots.

  (3-1), (3-2), (3-3), (3-4), and (3-5) are diagrams showing the resolution of the recording dots. (3-1) indicates that one dot is recorded on a 600 × 600 dpi surface, and has a 1-bit information indicating whether or not to print the recorded dot. (3-2) indicates that up to 3 dots can be recorded on a 600 × 600 dpi surface. This is a format having the number of dots recorded on a certain surface as 2-bit information (hereinafter referred to as area). (Referred to as gradation multi-value data). Here, when the data to be recorded is “00”, 0 dots are recorded, when the data to be recorded is “01”, 1 dot is recorded, and when the data to be recorded is “10”, dots to be recorded In the following description, the number of dots is two, and when the data to be recorded is “11”, the number of dots to be recorded is three. In the recording data shown in (3-1), there are two types of cases where recording dots are printed or not, but in the recording data shown in (3-2), there are four cases where the number of dots is one. In the case of 2, there are 6 print results, and in the case of 3, there are 4 print results. In this case, if only the number of dots to be recorded is taken into consideration, and the positions of the dots to be recorded are ignored and attention is paid only to the density, four kinds of density differences are generated. This means that when recording is performed in the same area, the data amount is reduced by a quarter compared to when recording is performed by specifying both the recording position and the number of dots. In addition, area gradation multi-value data with various density values that can be expressed in the same region is recorded, such as data represented by (3-3), (3-4), (3-5), etc. Present depending on the mode. Conventionally, the area gradation multi-value data received from the host is converted into the recording data shown in (3-1) where the recording position and the number are specified once, and thinning out the data for density / tone adjustment. Although processing has been performed, by using the present invention, it is possible to perform data thinning processing for density / tone adjustment with area gradation multi-value data, and the position and number of recording once described above can be obtained. Compared with the case of converting to specified data, the processing speed can be increased.

  In addition, when density values of various area gradation multi-value data are stored in a predetermined density table for each recording mode and thinning processing is performed, the thinning is performed by referring to the density table corresponding to the corresponding storage mode. By performing the process, it is possible to perform an optimum thinning process for each recording mode.

  Hereinafter, the thinning processing method of the area gradation multi-value data will be described in detail.

  Data thinning processing for adjusting density and color tone of normal recording data is performed using the SMS processing method disclosed in JP-A-10-157113. The SMS decimation process reads the decimation comparison counter value specified by the counter each time there is recorded data, prints the recorded data if 1 is accumulated, decimates the recorded data if 0, and moves the counter This is a thinning process performed by repeating the process of comparing with the thinning comparison counter value when the recording data comes again. FIG. 4 illustrates the process. When (4-1) the recording data thinning rate is 12.5%, (4-2) shows the recording data before and after thinning processing when the recording data thinning rate is 50%. Show. Actually, the thinning rate is adjusted by changing the value of the thinning comparison counter. By using this thinning process, variations in the thinning amount can be avoided and the thinning amount can be controlled reliably. However, the thinning processing method shown in FIG. 4 is possible only for a format having 1-bit information indicating whether or not to print a recording dot.

  FIG. 5 is a diagram showing a density table referred to by the thinning-out arithmetic circuit according to the present invention. In the density table, various area gradation multi-value data corresponding to the recording mode used in the recording apparatus and the density value can be stored in advance, and the thinning-out arithmetic circuit can select the density table according to the recording mode. The thinning-out operation is performed with reference to the value of.

  FIG. 6 is a diagram showing a thinning processing method for the area gradation multi-value data used in the present invention.

  Unlike the recording data shown in (4-1) of FIG. 4, the data to be subjected to the thinning processing is area gradation multi-value data having the number of dots to be recorded on a certain surface as information of several bits. FIG. 6 shows an example in which the number of dots recorded on a certain surface is 4-bit area gradation multi-value data. At this time, the following processing is performed. First, the recording data of the surface to be thinned is read. If the data is “1100”, the density value indicated by the data is referred to from the density table corresponding to the recording mode. From the density table, it can be seen that there are two recording dots on the surface. Therefore, the second value counted from the beginning of the thinning comparison counter value is referred to. For example, if the thinning comparison value is “11”, all the recording dots existing on the surface are printed, so the recording data after the thinning process remains “1000” as before the processing. . If the decimation comparison counter value to be compared is “10”, only one dot is actually printed out of two dots, so the recording data after the decimation process is “0001”, “0101”, or “0110”. "Or" 0111 ". As described above, as shown in FIG. 6, the number of recording dots present on the surface to be thinned out is compared with the thinning comparison counter value, and the thinning comparison counter value is sequentially thinned, whereby the area gradation multi-value data Thin out.

  (7-1) in FIG. 7 shows thinning when the thinning rate in a certain recording line is 12.5% for area gradation multivalued data represented by 4 bits of 2 × 2 recording modes. FIG. 2B is a diagram when thinning processing is performed when the thinning rate is 37.5% with respect to area gradation multi-value data represented by 4 bits of a recording mode of 2 × 4. As shown in this figure, by using the present invention, it is determined whether or not recording is performed for each bit with respect to each dot of each lattice existing in the target recording surface (2 × 2 lattice). Compared with the thinning-out method to be determined, 1/4 processing is required for internal processing or 1/8 processing is required depending on the recording mode.

  FIG. 8 shows a flowchart in the present embodiment, and FIG. 9 shows a flowchart in the thinning process.

  As described above, according to the present invention, the thinning process for adjusting the print density and the color tone is performed for each recording mode without being converted into real data expressed by whether or not the unit recording dot is printed once. Therefore, the processing can be speeded up and simplified as compared with the case where the thinning process is performed after the dot expansion. In addition, density unevenness that occurs when printing is performed between scans in the scanning direction based on print data is corrected by optimizing the data format for each print mode using the thinning means for adjusting the density and color tone. This makes it possible to obtain a higher-quality recording result.

(Other examples)
The second embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIG. At the joints in the scanning direction in each recording, density unevenness occurs due to overlapping of recording dots. Therefore, in the printing range in the scanning direction, the recording data of the portion overlapping with the next printing range is thinned out according to the recording mode, so that the density difference in this portion can be reduced. Actually, the thinning-out of the area gradation multi-value data in the present invention is applied to this recording connecting portion, and the density and color tone are adjusted, so that a higher-definition recording result can be obtained. FIG. 11 is a flowchart in the present embodiment.

The figure which shows the principal mechanism part of the ink jet recording device Block diagram showing the configuration of the controller Diagram showing dot data and area gradation multi-value data Diagram showing types of dot data and area gradation multi-value data Diagram showing how to thin out dot data The figure which shows the flow of processing of area gradation multi-value data Table showing correspondence between thinning target data and thinning data Diagram showing thinning processing of area gradation multi-value data Thinning process flowchart Thinning position diagram of the connecting part Flow chart showing recording process

Explanation of symbols

1 Host 2 Standard I / F circuit 3 CPU
4 RAM
5 ROM
6 Encoder Circuit 7 Image Processing Unit 8 Motor Drive Circuit 9 Encoder Sensor 10 Head Driver 11 Recording Head 12 Carriage Motor 13 Paper Feed Motor

Claims (4)

In a recording apparatus for recording an image on a recording medium by a recording head based on recording data,
Storage means for storing multi-value image data to be recorded;
Thinning holding means for holding thinned data corresponding to the thinning rate;
Table holding means for holding a density table defining density values of each pixel data of the multi-value image data stored in the storage means;
Thinning means for thinning out the pixel data in comparison with the density value of each corresponding pixel data in the held density table;
Generating means for generating recording data based on the pixel data thinned out by the thinning means;
A recording apparatus comprising:   2. The density table defining the density value of each pixel data of the multi-value image data is represented by a resolution and a number of dots configured according to a recording mode of the image data. Recording device.   In order to correct density unevenness that occurs when printing is performed between scans in the scanning direction based on recording data, correction is performed using the thinning means that performs the density / tone adjustment optimally according to the recording mode. The recording apparatus according to claim 1 or 2, having a function.   The recording apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the processing speed is increased by enabling thinning processing of area gradation multilevel data optimally according to the recording mode.

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