Method of sharpening an RGB image for sending to a printhead

1. A method of sharpening an image to be sent to a printhead, the method comprising the steps of:

receiving an RGB (red, green, blue) data set indicative of the image;

deriving an initial luminance channel from the received data set;

sharpening the initial luminance channel to form a revised luminance channel; and

incorporating the revised luminance channel into the data set.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of sharpening includes the step of translating the RGB image data set into a color space where the luminance is separated from color information specified by the data set.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data set includes the initial luminance channel as a separate channel.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the step of deriving the initial luminance channel includes the step of accessing the initial luminance channel included in the data set.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the step of accessing the initial luminance channel includes the step of high-pass filtering said channel to provide a filtered luminance channel.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the step of accessing the initial luminance channel includes forming a revised luminance channel from a sum of the initial luminance channel and a predetermined portion of the filtered luminance channel.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the step of high-pass filtering includes filtering using a convolution filter selected from the group consisting of a 3·3 convolution filter, a 5·5 convolution filter, and a 7·7 convolution filter.