Public Title Methods, Devices, and Systems for Compressing Images (Resulting from HP Contract ?) Division Lead Inventor Anderson, Peter Public Description Many laser and inkjet printers currently produced cannot print the many shades of gray or color that are necessary to simulate continuous grayscale or multi-color images, also referred to as contone images. These printers typically only print utilizing one color ink and, at a given space on a page, the printer either leaves the space blank or places a dot of ink. The process by which dots of various sizes and densities are used to mimic an image is called halftoning. This process can sometimes lead to losses in data and accuracy in the desired picture. This technology is a technique for converting continuous gray-scale images or multi- colored images to halftone images in a manner that lend themselves to lossless data compression with a compression factor of two or better. The technique allows for a sorting process that permits a reversible rearrangement of image pixels into groups with a highly skewed distribution allowing compression coding techniques to be applied. Patent Status Public References Key Words Computer Technology , Computer Technology/Image processing Manager Karen White Email kfwhite@prf.org Telephone 765-588-3486 Fax 765-463-3486   Back to List