1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming system which forms an image corresponding to an image data on a printing sheet, and specifically to an image forming system which can change a color tone arbitrarily by manipulating color adjustment parameters.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, an image forming device such as a color printer is configured to express various colors by using a plurality of kinds of ink or toner of various colors which are different from each other (hereinafter, referred to as “color component”) and change a rate of blending these color components.
However, since printed colors are affected by various factors, even if a rate of blending color components is constant, the printed colors are not necessarily constant. In addition, a favorite of color varies depending on individuals. Therefore, the image forming device is generally provided with a color adjustment function.
The color adjustment function is a function to increase or reduce the blend rate of specific color components more than or less than a preliminarily setup rate so as to print in a color tone a user desires. Generally, such a change is made by adjusting color adjustment parameters representing amount of color components.
There is known an image forming device which can print typical test patterns including a numerical representation which shows setup color adjustment parameters (such as concentration) in numerical values and images corresponding to setup color adjustment parameters (such as a gray scale) in order to allow a user to recognize the change of a color tone of printed image according to changed color adjustment parameters. An example of such a technique is disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. HEI 7-87318.
However, a color adjustment is a matter of sense, and it is difficult to imagine how the actual color tone would be from printed results of typical test patterns. Therefore, it is necessary to print actual image data instead of or in addition to test patterns (hereinafter, referred to as “test printing”).
That is, while varying setup of color adjustment parameters, test printings are executed with changing the parameters, and results are compared. Then, the color adjustment parameters are finally adopted as those at the time when the desirable color tones is obtained.
When such a test printing is performed, whenever setup of color adjustment parameters is changed, it is necessary to write down or print the test patterns for later reference. Namely, every time when the setup is changed, the test patterns and actual image data are repeatedly printed as test printing (or write down contents of color adjustment parameters). Therefore, there has been a problem where troublesome work is required.