Control system for digital de-screening of documents

A control system included in a de-screening system, the de-screening system including a bank of filters, the bank of filters receiving an image signal and producing a set of filter output signals, the control system comprising:

• a contrast module receiving a filter output signal from a first filter in a bank of filters, the first filter being one of the filters having larger filter spans in the bank of filters, and producing a contrast signal;
• a halftone estimate module receiving the image signal and a filter output signal from a second filter in the bank of filters, the second filter being one of the filters having smaller filter spans in the bank of filters, and producing an estimated frequency signal and a halftone weight signal;
• and
• a pixel control module receiving the contrast signal from the contrast module and the estimated frequency signal and the halftone weight signal from the halftone estimate module, and producing the first control signal, the first control signal including information regarding which of the filter output signals are to be blended and the proportion of blending.

An article of manufacture comprising:

• a machine usable medium having program code embedded therein, the program code is used for controlling de-screening operation in a de-screening system, the de-screening system including a bank of filters, the bank of filters receiving an image signal and producing a set of filter output signals, the program code comprising:
• machine readable code to process a filter output signal received from a first filter in a bank of filters and produce a contrast signal, the first filter being one of the filters having larger filter spans in the bank of filters;
• machine readable code to process the image signal and a second filter output signal received from a second filter in the bank of filters, the second filter being one of the filters having smaller filter spans in the bank of filters, and produce an estimated frequency signal and a halftone weight signal;
• and
• machine readable code to process the contrast signal and the estimated frequency signal and the halftone weight signal, and produce the first control signal, the first control signal including information regarding which of the filter output signals are to be blended and the proportion of blending.