Patent ID: 8274717

Claim:
A method for characterizing color separation misregistration of a printer device using color separations of a color space for marking a substrate, the method comprising: receiving by a tangible processor a colorimetric value corresponding to a colorimetric measurement of respective patches of a plurality of patches included in an output image output by the printer device, each patch of the plurality of patches having markings of a first and second color separation of the color space, wherein: the markings include parallel lines including lines of the first color separation and lines of the second color separation; and the plurality of patches includes at least one series of patches, wherein the lines of the first color separation have different incremental displacements relative to the lines of the second color separation for each respective patch of a series of patches of the at least one series of patches; fitting a single curve to the received colorimetric values associated with each of the patches of the plurality of patches; characterizing by the processor misregistration of the first color separation relative to the second color separation using the curve; determining by the processor a peak received colorimetric value for a patch series of the at least one patch series; determining by the processor a magnitude of the displacement that corresponds to the peak; and determining by the processor an offset between the determined displacement magnitude and an expected displacement magnitude corresponding to an expected peak colorimetric value associated with ideal color separation registration; wherein the characterizing of the misregistration is further based on the determined offset.