Printing apparatus, printing method, and printing system

An apparatus comprising:

• a printing head configured to include a plurality of elements arrayed in a predetermined direction for forming dots on a printing medium and form dots on the printing medium by using the plurality of elements based on dot data indicating whether to form dots;
• a generation unit configured to quantize multi-valued input image data and generate the dot data for the plurality of elements by using an index pattern that determines arrangement of dots corresponding to the quantized data;
• an acquisition unit configured to acquire identification information that identifies a faulty element that is unable to form dots properly on the printing medium from among the plurality of elements;
• and
• a complementary unit configured to generate complementary dot data for the faulty element by taking the dot data generated for the identified faulty element as dot data corresponding to an element near the identified element in the predetermined direction,
• wherein, in a case where any one of the elements is identified as a faulty element, the generation unit generates dot data for the faulty element by using an index pattern including more dots within the index pattern than dots in an index pattern used in a case where the element is not identified as a faulty element.

A method comprising:

• generating dot data for a plurality of elements arrayed in a predetermined direction to form dots by performing a quantization process on multi-valued input image data;
• identifying a faulty element that is unable to form dots properly on a printing medium from among the plurality of elements that form dots on the printing medium based on the dot data;
• and
• generating complementary dot data for the faulty element by taking the dot data generated for the identified faulty element as dot data corresponding to an element near the identified element in the predetermined direction,
• wherein, in the generating of the dot data, in a case where one element of the elements is identified as a faulty element, at least one of correction processing for increasing a value of the multi-valued input image data for a pixel corresponding to the element and correction processing for decreasing a threshold in the quantization process for the pixel corresponding to the element is performed.

A system comprising:

• a printing head provided with a plurality of elements arrayed in a predetermined direction for forming dots on a printing medium and configured to form dots on the printing medium by using the plurality of elements based on dot data indicating whether to form dots;
• a generation unit configured to generate the dot data for the plurality of elements by performing a quantization process on multi-valued input image data;
• an acquisition unit configured to acquire identification information that identifies a faulty element that is unable to form dots properly on the printing medium from among the plurality of elements;
• and
• a complementary unit configured to generate complementary dot data for the faulty element by taking the dot data generated for the identified faulty element as dot data corresponding to an element near the identified element in the predetermined direction,
• wherein, in a case where one of the elements is identified as a faulty element, the generation unit performs at least one of correction processing for increasing a value of the multi-valued input image data for a pixel corresponding to the one element and correction processing for decreasing a threshold in the quantization process for the pixel corresponding to the one element.