Color Reproduction of Metallic-Ink Images

V. Babaei, R. D. Hersch

Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, 60(3): 030503-1-030503-10, 2016

We study the color reproduction of full-color metallic-ink images. Full-color metallic-ink images are prints whose contributing colorants are exclusively made of colored metallic inks. Due to the presence of metallic particles, metallic inks show a metal-like luster. These particles are opaque and hide the underlying ink or substrate. In order to obtain predictable halftone colors, we need a juxtaposed halftoning method to create halftone dots of different colors side by side without overlapping. Juxtaposed halftoning invalidates many assumptions generally made for the color reproduction workflow. For printing metallic-ink images, one needs a color separation system creating surface coverages for the 8 metallic inks that correspond to the 8 Neugebauer primaries. For this purpose, we introduce a simple and fast method for N-color separation that relies either on Demichel’s or on a variant of Kueppers’ ink-to-colorant separations. Thanks to a unique set of ink-to-colorant formulas, pseudo-CMY ink values are separated into amounts of printable colorants. We also describe color separation procedures that are able to optimize different properties of the resulting metallic-ink images.

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