Patent ID: 8269992

Claim:
A printing system, comprising: a printing apparatus capable of using one or more of a first type of ink and a second type of ink, whose permeability is lower than the first type of ink, and configured to decompress compressed image data; and a print control apparatus configured to cause the printing apparatus to print an image, the print control apparatus comprising: a determination unit configured to determine whether the printing apparatus uses the second type of ink as well as the first type of ink or whether the printing apparatus uses the first type of ink without using the second type of ink, when the printing apparatus prints the image, an identification unit configured to, if it is determined by the determination unit that the printing apparatus uses the second type of ink as well as the first type of ink, identify a first area and a second area of the image based on information representing the image, where the first area is an area to be printed by the printing apparatus using the first type of ink and the second area is an area to be printed by the printing apparatus using the second type of ink, a compression unit configured to: (i) lossily compress image data of the first area and losslessly compress image data of the second area, if it is determined by the determination unit that the printing apparatus uses the second type of ink as well as the first type of ink, and (ii) lossily compress image data corresponding to the image to be printed by the printing apparatus, if it is determined by the determination unit that the printing apparatus uses the first type of ink without using the second type of ink, and a print control unit configured to send the image data compressed by the compression unit to the printing apparatus, wherein the printing apparatus decompresses the compressed image data and prints the image according to the decompressed image data.