Novel color halftoning algorithm for ink savings

Jiang, Wanling; Veis, Alex; Ulichney, Robert; Allebach, Jan P.

doi:10.2352/issn.2470-1173.2018.16.color-429

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The importance of halftoning is not only for printing but also for the transmission of information and representation [5]. It is necessary to develop an accurate halftoning mechanism to increase the quality of the output images; it helps, for example, to reduce the waste of ink in printing devices [3]. The strengths and weaknesses of halftoning algorithms are discussed in the present work; also introduced here is an alternative method that can obtain better results with desired characteristics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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An Evolutionary Approach to Improve the Halftoning Process

et al. 2020

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The techniques of halftoning are widely used in marketing because they reduce the cost of impression and maintain the quality of graphics. Halftoning converts a digital image into a binary image conformed by dots. The output of the halftoning contains less visual information; a possible benefit of this task is the reduction of ink when graphics are printed. The human eye is not able to detect the absence of information, but the printed image stills have good quality. The most used method for halftoning is called Floyd-Steinberger, and it defines a specific matrix for the halftoning conversion. However, most of the proposed techniques in halftoning use predefined kernels that do not permit adaptation to different images. This article introduces the use of the harmony search algorithm (HSA) for halftoning. The HSA is a popular evolutionary algorithm inspired by the musical improvisation. The different operators of the HSA permit an efficient exploration of the search space. The HSA is applied to find the best configuration of the kernel in halftoning; meanwhile, as an objective function, the use of the structural similarity index (SSIM) is proposed. A set of rules are also introduced to reduce the regular patterns that could be created by non-appropriate kernels. The SSIM is used due to the fact that it is a perception model used as a metric that permits comparing images to interpret the differences between them numerically. The aim of combining the HSA with the SSIM for halftoning is to generate an adaptive method that permits estimating the best kernel for each image based on its intrinsic attributes. The graphical quality of the proposed algorithm has been compared with classical halftoning methodologies. Experimental results and comparisons provide evidence regarding the quality of the images obtained by the proposed optimization-based approach. In this context, classical algorithms have a lower graphical quality in comparison with our proposal. The results have been validated by a statistical analysis based on independent experiments over the set of benchmark images by using the mean and standard deviation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Different printing devices take advantage of halftoning, and it is included as a step that permits the reduction of resources such as ink [3]. Ink reduction is a common implementation, and it happens due to the print devices having a limited color palette.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%