1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color converting apparatus and color converting method for performing designated-color printing in a printing operation by a printing apparatus and to a computer readable recording medium for recording a program for designated-color printing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, the designated-color printing means printing using designated colors, and is used for printing a lot of advertisement leaflets and the like with saving toners and inks used in printing operation by printing apparatuses. For instance, two-color printing using two colors “red” and “black” is widely used.
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 4,052,415, a technique of the two-color printing is known, in which printing colors such as a main and sub-main colors are designated by printing commands supplied from application program, and these colors are converted to a first and second ink colors set previously in a printing machine, and then printing commands including the printing-color information is sent to said printing machine.
In the above disclosed technique, information indicating correlation in color between the main and sub-main colors and the first and second ink colors is previously fixed by a user. When the printing command is output, it is detected whether the main color has been designated or whether the sub-main color has been designated. And then, the detected color is converted to the first or second ink color based on the information indicating the correlation previously fixed by the user.
Now, it is assumed that a user creates an object to be printed, including such as text, graphic and image data, and/or their combined data (hereinafter, referred to as “data-for-printing”), using plural colors on application software, and wants to print the created data-for-printing in designated-color printing using colors (for instance, “red” and “black”) designated by the user. In this case, the plural colors designated by the printing commands to be used in color printing will include a so-called “full-color” or at least more than the number of printing colors used in the designated-color printing.
In the conventional technique, color conformation of a main color (for instance, “red”) is detected from color information designated by the printing commands corresponding to the data-for-printing, and the detected color information is converted to color information of a first ink color (for instance, “red” ink color) of the printer. When color information of color other than the main color designated by the printing command is detected, the detected color information is converted to color information of a second ink color (for instance, “black” ink color) of the printer.
But the conventional technique can execute only a limited color designation, which correlates particular colors in the data-for-printing, for example, with either of colors used in the two-color printing. Therefore, the user is required to designate colors with using two-color printing in mind at the stage when he/she creates data-for-printing. As a result, the conventional technique has a problem that cannot easily print data-for-printing, such as previously prepared multicolor pamphlets in designated-color printing as the user desires.