Model-based deduction of CMYK surface coverages from visible and infrared spectral measurements of halftone prints

The Yule-Nielsen modified Spectral Neugebauer reflection prediction model enhanced with an ink spreading model provides high accuracy when predicting reflectance spectra from ink surface coverages. In the present contribution, we try to inverse the model, i.e. to deduce the surface coverages of a printed color halftone patch from its measured reflectance spectrum. This process yields good results for cyan, magenta, and yellow inks, but unstable results when simultaneously fitting cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks due to redundancy between these four inks: black can be obtained by printing either the black ink or similar amounts of the cyan, magenta, and yellow inks. To overcome this problem, we use the fact that the black pigmented ink absorbs light in the infrared domain, whereas cyan, magenta, and yellow inks do not. Therefore, with reflection spectra measurements spanning both the visible and infrared domain, it is possible to accurately deduce the black ink coverage. Since there is no redundancy anymore, the cyan, magenta, yellow, and pigmented black ink coverages can be recovered with high accuracy.