Patent ID: 7894109

Claim:
A method for characterizing color separation misregistration of a printer device using color separations of a color space for marking a substrate, comprising: receiving a colorimetric value corresponding to a colorimetric measurement of a marked measurement patch and respective marked calibration patches of a plurality of calibration patches included in an output image output by the printer device, the plurality of calibration patches having a variety of color separation configurations, each color separation configuration using a first and second color separation of the color space, the marked measurement patch having a single predetermined color separation configuration; determining a characteristic of a curve associated with the measured colorimetric values corresponding to the respective patches of the plurality of calibration patches; generating a calibration function based on the determined characteristic of the curve for providing expected colorimetric values for the predetermined color separation configuration as related to a misregistration characteristic value; and determining from the calibration function a misregistration characteristic value that corresponds to the measured colorimetric value corresponding to the marked measurement patch for characterizing misregistration of the first color separation relative to the second color separation; and wherein each color separation configuration includes an image line screen having a plurality of parallel lines including respective lines of the first and second color separation; wherein the plurality of calibration patches includes a first and second series of patches, wherein for each of the respective first and second series of patches, the lines of the first color separation for each respective patch have different incremental screen displacements relative to the lines of the second color separation; and wherein: the parallel lines of the second patch series are oriented at an angle relative to the parallel lines of the first patch series, where the angle is not an integer multiple of 180 degrees; the measurement patch includes a first and second measurement patch, wherein the parallel lines of the second measurement patch are oriented at an angle relative to the parallel line of the second measurement patch, where the angle is not an integer multiple of 180 degrees; the step of determining the characteristic of the curve includes determining the characteristic of the curve associated with the measured colorimetric values corresponding to each of the respective first and second series of patches; and the step of generating the calibration function includes generating a first and second calibration function based on the determined characteristic of the curve corresponding to the first and second series of patches, respectively.