Enhanced Error Diffusion with Thresholds Modulated by Spatio-Chromatically Correlated Noise

Typical halftoning implementations in 600 dpi color printing systems have significant image quality limitations. Error diffusion techniques frequently exhibit objectionable artifacts that include noise in highlight regions, patterning in mid-tone regions, worming, and edge melting. By understanding the image quality limitations of the algorithm and the nature of the human visual system we define the requirements to optimize error diffusion halftoning. We describe a modified error diffusion technique that achieves quality improvements over previous techniques while remaining computationally tractable. The central idea is that the threshold for the ED process is modulated according to a set of spatiochromatically correlated 2D screens. We discuss the relative image quality of the algorithm in the context of both single- and multi-channel visual models.

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