Evaluating the Overall Image Quality of Hardcopy Output.

This paper addresses the need for a manageable method of evaluating the overall image quality of hardcopy output from printer systems so that the systems can be compared in a meaningful way. Image quality metrics are widely used and are very objective, but are unsuitable for this purpose because there is no good way of extracting overall image quality from the large number of possible metrics. On the other hand, preference measurements do provide information on overall image quality in a customer-relevant form but are notoriously subjective. Moreover, it is difficult to extract from them information needed for engineering improvements, since preference can be severely impacted by poor performance on a single attribute. In this paper, a comprehensive high-level set of image quality attributes is introduced for the purpose of evaluating overall image quality. An example of such a set of attributes is proposed and discussed.