1. A method of operating a projection imaging tool, the method comprising: positioning a substrate with a recording media in a desired location; exposing a first portion of a reticle pattern onto a substrate with a recording media thereby producing a first exposure, wherein the first exposure of the portion of the reticle pattern includes at least two arrays of alignment attributes, the arrays of alignment attributes having features complementary to each other and the arrays having the same pitch and being offset from each other; shifting a reticle stage in a desired direction by a desired amount; exposing a second portion of the reticle pattern onto the substrate thereby producing a second exposure, the second exposure pattern being essentially the same as the first exposure pattern, wherein the shifting of the reticle stage between the first and the second exposure aligns the first and second exposures such that alignment attributes in the second exposure overlap and interlock with alignment attributes in the first exposure thereby creating completed alignment attributes; measuring positional offsets of the completed alignment attributes; and determining the reticle stage portion of a synchronization error.