Modeling the effect of ink spread and ink penetration on tone reproduction

In ink jet printing when ink is printed on top of the paper, two effects occur that have an effect on the dot that is printed. One effect is that the ink spreads out laterally and the other is that the ink penetrates into the paper. A tone reproduction model was developed that mathematically modeled the effects ink spread and ink penetration have on tone reproduction. Since the optical behavior of ink penetration is very complex, the model only included characteristics that were expected to be significant. This model was built from the foundation of another tone reproduction model which mathematically modeled the optical effect of halftone patterns as a probability. The model was tested using test samples consisting of gray scales produced by thermal ink jet. These samples were produced by varying certain conditions that are thought to affect ink penetration and ink spread and simulate other ink jet environments such as different inks, different papers, and different printers. Microdensitometry equipment was used to obtain data from the samples and the model was analyzed on how well it fit the data