A web-based troubleshooting tool to help customers self-solve color issues with a digital printing workflow

Hector J. Santos-Villalobos; Victor Loewen; Mark Lehto; Jan Allebach

doi:10.1117/12.877500

7 February 2011 A web-based troubleshooting tool to help customers self-solve color issues with a digital printing workflow

Hector J. Santos-Villalobos, Victor Loewen, Mark Lehto, Jan Allebach

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7879, Imaging and Printing in a Web 2.0 World II; 787906 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.877500
Event: IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2011, San Francisco Airport, California, United States

Abstract

Current printing technologies enable customers to reproduce high quality, realistic, and colorful hard copies of their digital documents. Although the activity of printing is transparent to the customers, the progression of a customer's document through the color printing workflow (CPW) is a complex process that may alter the colors in the print job. Given the complexity of the CPW, it is a difficult problem to diagnose the source of the color issue. Novel tools and methods that address this challenge are beneficial for both the manufacturer and its customers. We propose a Web-based troubleshooting tool that helps customers to self-solve color issues with electrophotographic laser printers when printing solid colors in graphics and text. The tool helps the customer to reconfigure his/her CPW following printing best practices. If the issue is still unresolved, the tool guides the user to search the gamut of the printer for his/her color preference. The usability of the tool was carefully evaluated with human subject experiments. Also, the description and organization of the troubleshooting tasks were continuously reviewed and improved in regular meetings of the development team. In this paper, we describe the troubleshooting strategy, the color preference search algorithm, and the results of the usability experiments.

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Hector J. Santos-Villalobos, Victor Loewen, Mark Lehto, and Jan Allebach "A web-based troubleshooting tool to help customers self-solve color issues with a digital printing workflow", Proc. SPIE 7879, Imaging and Printing in a Web 2.0 World II, 787906 (7 February 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.877500

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