New York, NY -- While people have tried their hardest to get color printers to print and then visibly show the difference between effects such as matte and glossy, it has not worked. That is, until now. An international team of computer scientists, says New Scientist magazine, have developed a printer that not only produces colors, but sheens.
Previously, printers have relied on metallic inks on their own as “spot colors”. Fabio Pellacini of Adobe Systems and Dartmouth College believes that it is possible to produce subtle differences in reflectivity via mixing metallic colors much like printers currently mix cyan, magenta, and yellow. Working with colleagues Wojciech Matusik and Szymon Rusinkiewicz and others at Adobe, they were able to use a color thermal printer which was capable of handling the array of metallic inks and foils in addition to normal inks.
The thermal printer they did there work on could handle up to 7 inks at a time, but to produce the results they wanted, 12 inks were necessary (cyan, metallic cyan, magenta, metallic magenta, yellow, metallic gold, black, metallic silver, gold foil, silver foil, finish and primer). Cartridges were swapped out and images were printed over up to 6 times. That said, however, only half the problem was solved. It is one thing to be able to control reflectivity, but to produce real images, they had to examine the reflectivity of the original object. To capture the fine details, they utilized a piece of automated equipment that will take pictures of an object from a variety of angles and lit from different positions.
The resulting data gave the team the ability to discern the ratio between incoming and reflected light. Thus, the color of the object is matched as well as its highlights which allows representations of metal, plastic, and paints.
However, this new development, while exciting has its limitations. The low resolution limits the quality of the finished product. This is expected to be more temporary than permanent as Pellacini believes future developments will be aid in the process. The overarching goal is to be able to combine this with 3-D printing to create 3-D objects that look more realistic.
Roger Hersch from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology said that there is a trend in printing that goes beyond pure color. He does not believe this technique will make it to home users anytime soon. Right now, the largest group that will benefit are graphic arts professionals. Pellacini does not disagree. One of the largest issues is how to get the “ ‘input’ to our printer” because very few labs will have access to the type of equipment necessary to measure an object’s reflectivity, and without that, recreating the work of Pellacini and his colleagues is not possible.
BY ADAM HAIGH, Editor
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