Patent ID: 7095531

Claim:
A method for compensating for streak defects in an image formed using an image forming device that forms the image on a receiving material that is translated through the image forming device along a process direction, comprising: printing a compensation pattern usable to determine a difference in gray level between an actual gray level value and an intended gray level value at a cross-process-direction image-forming device pixel location in the image, comprising: printing a plurality of gray level portions, each gray level portion having a gray level that is different from the other gray level portions and extending along the cross-process-direction, the plurality of gray level portions arranged along the process direction, and spaced from each other along the process direction such that a gap is provided between each pair of adjacent gray level portions, printing a number of rows of fiducial marks, the rows of fiducial marks distributed among the plurality of gray level portions and comprising at least some of: a first row of fiducial marks located before the plurality of gray level portions along the process direction, a second row of fiducial marks located after the plurality of gray level portions along the process direction, and at least one third row of fiducial marks, each third row of fiducial marks located in a gap between a pair of adjacent gray level portions; scanning the compensation pattern to generate a set of scanned image data, the scanned image data defining an image value for each of a plurality of scanned image cross-process-direction pixel locations for at least one of the gray level portions and for at least one row of fiducial marks; analyzing the scanned image data for at least one of the gray level portions to determine at least one actual gray level value for at least one of the plurality of gray level portions for at least one cross-process-direction image-forming device pixel location based on a location of at least one fiducial mark of the at least one row of fiducial marks in the scanned image data; generating, for each analyzed cross-process-direction image-forming device pixel location, for each analyzed gray level portion of that analyzed cross-process-direction image-forming device pixel location, at least one compensation parameter based on the determined actual gray level value for that analyzed gray level portion and the intended gray level value for that analyzed gray level portion.