Patent attributes
A method of camouflaging defective print elements in a printer having a printhead with print elements, and each pixel of the image is assigned to a print element, and image information of a pixel that is assigned to a defective print element shifts to a nearby pixel position capable of printing with a non-defective print element. Shifting the image information includes the steps of a) encoding the image information to be printed as a multi-level pixel matrix in which one of a predetermined set of pixel values (“0”, “1”, “2”) is assigned to each pixel and at least one of the pixel values is a conditional pixel value (“1”) encoding a print instruction that depends upon whether or not a neighbouring pixel corresponds to a defective print element, b) determining defective print elements of the printer, and c) executing the print instruction.
