A printer and a method of processing an image (1) to be printed with a printer which has a printing unit arranged to produce a printout from image-representing print data of the image, and a processing unit for processing image-representing input data of the image so as to generate the image-representing print data. The processing unit is arranged for separating the image into a line detail sub-image (20) containing edge and line details, and an area detail sub-image (25) containing area details, performing a first printing mode processing pipeline on the line detail sub-image and performing a second, different printing mode processing pipeline on the area detail sub-image, and generating multi-layer print mask data, wherein at least one print mask data layer is usable to print the line detail sub-image in at least one line detail print pass, and the remaining, i.e. at least one of the print mask data layers being used to print the area detail sub-image in at least one area detail print pass to produce an image (50) which has optimized image quality.