METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF BOTH COLOR AND BLACK AND WHITE IMAGES PRODUCED BY INK JET AND ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTERS

A method of gray scale printing of dots of one or more colors into pixels and in a controlled ordered sequence into a plurality of super pixels defined by a given number of said pixels, characterized in that: one or more levels of dot loading are used to achieve different values of gray level in a multiple-level gray table. This generic method is applicable to both ink jet and electrophotographic printing species of this invention. In one electrophotograpic printing species of this invention, there is disclosed a method of electrophotographic color printing which includes mixing a plurality of colors in a single plane and in dot-next-to-dot (DND) pixels within a plurality of super pixels to produce a color image, whereby the sum of the multi-color dots printed in any super pixel is limited to the number of subdivided individual pixels therein, thereby assuring dot-next-to-dot (DND) always printing of said colors in a single plane. The above method further includes varying the area of each printed color dot within each pixel of a super pixel in order to control the gray scale of a printed color image. Gray scale printing is achieved by controlling the selection of a gray table entry level number representative of one of several available entry level numbers corresponding to a plurality of different dot loadings for a corresponding plurality of differently printed super pixels.