Quality Space for High-Quality Inkjet Prints

The high-quality inkjet market is expanding and a large number of printers and print substrates are available. This makes the ability to analyse current print quality and quantify improvements increasingly important. For print quality evaluations, technical measures are preferred since they are repeatable and less time consuming than visual assessments. The question is which print quality factors that best describe the overall visual appearance of an inkjet print? The aim of this investigation is to identify those factors and thus define a quality space that characterises the print result in relation to visual appraisal. Sample material has been obtained by printing on nine different inkjet papers in three desktop inkjet printers. Technical quality factors assumed to be relevant for inkjet print quality, such as gloss, mottle, sharpness, grey balance, density and colour gamut have been obtained from the printed samples using technical measurements. Visual assessments have been made by a panel to determine the general visual quality. The relationship between the technical measures and the visual appraisal has been analysed using correlation coefficients, regression analysis and Principal Component Analysis. Among the factors studied here, the most important quality factor was the colour gamut. Further, colour raggedness and green mottle seem to be of importance. These three quality factors seem to determine a quality space for high-quality inkjet prints satisfactorily (0.90