Patent ID: 8199175

Claim:
A method for forming a plurality of non-contiguous features on a receiver element the method comprising: operating a multi-channel imaging head during a first scan of the imaging head in which the imaging head is advanced relative to the receiver element along a scan path to transfer first and second non-contiguous features from a donor element to the receiver element by a thermal transfer process wherein the first and second features are spatially separated from one another other at least in a sub-scan direction; operating the multi-channel imaging head during a second scan of the imaging head to transfer a third non-contiguous feature from the donor element to the receiver element by the thermal transfer process wherein the third feature is between the first and second features at least in the sub-scan direction and is spatially separated from each of the first and second features at least in the sub-scan direction; wherein the first, second and third non-contiguous features are features of a pattern and wherein the non-contiguous features of the pattern are spatially separated from one another at least in the sub-scan direction; comprising separately transferring two or more sets of the non-contiguous features of the pattern, each of the sets comprising one or more of the non-contiguous features of the pattern, wherein two or more non-contiguous features in a first set of the two or more sets are interleaved with the non-contiguous features in an additional set of the two or more sets; and comprising assigning the features to each of the two or more sets randomly.