Mitigating damage to drop generators in a printing system

An apparatus for mitigating damage to a plurality of drop generators in a printing system, said apparatus comprising:

• a data accessing module to access data corresponding to an image to be printed on a media by the printing system and to determine a characteristic type of at least a section of the image to be printed;
• a drop generator controlling module to control the plurality of drop generators to print the image on the media while mitigating damage to the plurality of drop generators, based on a determination of which of the plurality of drop generators are worn compared to other drop generators in the printing system, and without shifting placement of the image on the media or shifting the plurality of drop generators in a direction perpendicular to a feed direction of the media,
• wherein the drop generator controlling module is to control the plurality of drop generators to print at least the section of the image exclusively with either a first subset of the plurality of drop generators and a second subset of the plurality of drop generators depending upon the determined characteristic type of at least the section of the image to be printed;
• and
• a processor to implement the data accessing module and the drop generator controlling module.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium on which is stored machine readable instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to:

• access data corresponding to an image to be printed on a media by a printing system having an array of drop generators;
• and
• control the array of drop generators to print the image on the media while mitigating damage to the array of drop generators, based on a determination of which of a plurality of drop generators in the array of drop generators are worn compared to other drop generators in the printing system, without shifting placement of the image on the media or shifting the array of drop generators in a direction perpendicular to a feed direction of the media;
• wherein to control the array of drop generators further comprises control the array of drop generators to print a section of the image exclusively with a first subset of the plurality of drop generators or a second subset of the plurality of drop generators depending upon a determined characteristic type of the section of the image to be printed.