Patent ID: 7508544

Claim:
A printing control method of generating print data to be supplied to a print unit to print, the print unit capable of forming dots on a print medium by ejecting at least one type of colored ink containing a color material and a quality-enhancing ink for enhancing quality of a printed material, the printing control method comprising: (a) an outline area extraction step of extracting an outline area of an image expressed by given image data; and (b) a dot data generating step of generating colored dot data and transparent dot data according to the image data, the colored dot data expressing formation status of colored dots formed with the colored ink on each pixel, the transparent dot data expressing formation status of transparent dots formed with the quality-enhancing ink on each pixel, wherein the dot data generating step includes an ink volume reduction step of reducing ink volume of the transparent dots formed in the outline area among the transparent dots, the ink volume reduction step including a step of reducing a gradation value of the quality-enhancing ink for the pixels belonging to the outline area, and the dot data generating step further includes a color conversion step of converting color specification system of the image data, to convert pixel value expressing color of each pixel to multiple gradation data of the quality-enhancing ink and multiple gradation data of each color for expressing the color of each pixel with inks available in the print unit.