Moiré artifact prediction in a variable data printing environment

With the introduction of the digital press in recent years, the cost of short-run printing jobs has decreased. The "print-on- the-fly" capability of these digital presses makes it possible to compose documents based on the contents extracted from various databases. The traditional proofing method in print shops focuses on human visual inspection of one hard copy among thousands of print-outs. However, in variable data printing (VDP), each instance of the same template could use different texts, fonts, and images obtained through various capturing devices. Visual inspection of every copy is not cost efficient in the VDP environment. In this paper, we present a scheme to automatically predict the presence of moire artifacts in the print-out before the actual printing take place. Only the images that may induce moire artifact with respect to the targeted press will be identified and adaptive image processing can be applied to eliminate the potential artifact.