Patent ID: 8363281

Claim:
A method for printing an image with a printing system, comprising: a) providing a first array of dot forming elements for forming dots of a first color and a first size; b) providing a second array of dot forming elements for forming dots substantially equivalent to the first color and having a second size that is greater than the first size; c) using a multilevel halftoning process to multitone input image data having a number of input levels to produce a multitoned image having a multitone image resolution R Mx ×R My and a number of multitone levels L M , the multitone image resolution being lower than a printing resolution R Px ×R Py , and the number of multitone levels being smaller than the number of input levels and higher than a number of printing levels L p ; d) providing a look-up table, corresponding to the first color, wherein the look-up table is addressed by the multitone level and stores look-up table entries for each of the L M multitone level values, each look-up table entry being an n×m matrix specifying a pattern of dots of the first size and a pattern of dots of the second size, where n=R Px /R Mx and m=R Py /R My , wherein the number of dots of the first size specified by the look-up table is less than or equal to 0.5×(n×m) for every multitone level; e) using the look-up table, corresponding to the first color, to expand the multitoned image data from the multitone resolution to a print-ready image having the printing resolution by addressing the look-up table with the multitone levels of the multitoned image; and f) printing the print-ready image using the first array of dot forming elements and the second array of dot forming elements.