Patent ID: 7836825
Filing Date: 2010-11-23
Classification: B60K,G01D

Abstract:
1. A method of adjusting the luminance of a transmissive board having a plurality of transmissively illuminated areas (TIA) wherein the method of adjusting the luminance of the board comprises the steps of: illuminating the transmissive board via at least one light source with a substantially constant light transmittance on a front or back side of the board; identifying a first TIA that exhibits a lowest luminance from the board and designating the lowest luminance as a target luminance; identifying a second TIA that exhibits a control luminance higher than the lowest luminance from the transmissive board and designating the second TIA as a control object; providing a plurality of entire ink layers, each entire ink layer reducing the luminance of a TIA by a maximum control luminance value when applied to said TIA, wherein the plurality of entire ink layers is provided either on a plurality of ink sheets or is provided as a plurality of sections on a single ink sheet; calculating a criterion number which is an integer number by rounding down a ratio of a difference between the control luminance and the target luminance to the maximum control luminance value to the nearest integer wherein the criterion number provides the number of entire ink layers to be transferred to the control object in order to minimize the difference between the control luminance and the target luminance to a maximum control luminance value; calculating a criterion area-ratio by obtaining the fractional component of the ratio of the difference of luminance between the control luminance and the target luminance to the maximum control luminance value; reducing the control luminance to the target luminance by transferring the criterion number of said plurality of entire ink layers overlappingly to the control object; and subsequently transferring a fraction of one of said plurality of entire ink layers onto the control object, such that the fraction is equal to the criterion area-ratio, wherein the transferring step is performed by contacting the transmissive board with either the plurality of ink sheets or the single ink sheet to transfer the ink layers to the transmissive board.