A printing system is disclosed. The printing system includes at least one physical memory device to store nozzle correction logic and one or more processors coupled with at least one physical memory device to execute the nozzle correction logic to receive a uniformity compensated halftone design for each of a plurality of pel forming elements, receive an average missing neighbor threshold lowering function, receive a defective nozzles list including one or more of the plurality of pel forming elements indicated as defective during print production and perform missing neighbor processing by applying the average missing neighbor threshold lowering function associated with a pel forming element determined to be a neighbor of a defective pel forming element.