Saving of toner/ink consumption is an important task in modern printing devices. It has a positive ecological and social impact. We propose technique for converting print-job pictures to a recognizable and pleasant color sketches. Drawing a "pencil sketch" from a photo relates to a special area in image processing and computer graphics - non-photorealistic rendering. We describe a new approach for automatic sketch generation which allows to create well-recognizable sketches and to preserve partly colors of the initial picture. Our sketches contain significantly less color dots then initial images and this helps to save toner/ink. Our bio-inspired approach is based on sophisticated edge detection technique for a mask creation and multiplication of source image with increased contrast by this mask. To construct the mask we use DoG edge detection, which is a result of blending of initial image with its blurred copy through the alpha-channel, which is created from Saliency Map according to Pre-attentive Human Vision model. Measurement of percentage of saved toner and user study proves effectiveness of proposed technique for toner saving in eco-friendly printing mode.

Date Published: 24 January 2012
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 8292, Color Imaging XVII: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications, 829218 (24 January 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.906736

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8292:
Color Imaging XVII: Displaying, Processing, Hardcopy, and Applications
Reiner Eschbach; Gabriel G. Marcu; Alessandro Rizzi, Editor(s)