Interactive tool for incorporating user input and feedback in image quality related diagnosis

The presently disclosed embodiment provides an interactive tool for printed image artifact characterization that successfully combines the advantages from both a human visual system and automated image quality characterization. In the interactive tool provided, the user may specify coarse level information, such as the region of interest in a print image, to be examined by the automated image-quality characterization algorithm, which can then employ sophisticated algorithms, e.g. signal processing, feature extraction, estimation and classification, to find precise fine-level descriptors.