Computational Print Control

Printing may seem like a dinosaur among today’s imaging technologies, since its roots stretch back to Becquerel’s work that lead to the first color photographs and the first mechanical color reproduction at the end of the nineteenth century. Ten years ago, we then made the fundamental discovery of a new print control domain, where instead of choices about colorant amounts that are akin to the effect of color filters used since the beginning of color printing, print can be specified by the probabilities of colorant combinations, the Neugebauer Primaries. This has led to the ability to print patterns that were previously inaccessible and consequently, by using large-scale computational optimization, to delivering more color gamut, greater ink use efficiency and greater sharpness and detail in print, while using the same materials and printing system as before. This keynote will present the basic principles of the HANS print control paradigm, review the highlights of results obtained using it to date and indicate its potential future developments.