1. A method to decouple the control of dot-gain and optical density in electro-photographic based printing by varying the exposure level for each dot in an image, wherein each image dot is classified as an edge dot or a non-edge dot, and wherein non-edge dots are attributed an exposure level that controls the optical density, and wherein edge dots are attributed an exposure level to control dot gain, and wherein edge-dots are classified into stable edge-dots and unstable edge-dots that might fail to print.