Color separation method and printed product of the method

Abstract

A method is described for overcoming the adverse visual effect of misregistered ink planes in multiple ink color prints. Color separations are initially made in a normal fashion. The separation carrying the greatest object detail is then chosen as a luminance or achromatic channel. This may be used as is or preferably it is sharpened using a high pass filter. Normally this separation will be black. However, it may be a surrogate color for black, particularly if only two or three separations are made. Object detail in all other separations (chrominance separations) is degraded, usually by a low pass filter such as a Gaussian blur. The printed image formed when the separations are recombined in a conventional manner is remarkably visually tolerant of misregistration of the various ink planes in the image.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.