An approach for detecting and correcting printing system print quality defects is disclosed that allows defects to be corrected based on an analysis of image data collected over time, across many separate images, under a wide variety of system status and environmental conditions to allow detection of print quality defects that would otherwise be undetectable. The approach supports the detection and correction of defects related to colorant appearance effects that are correlated to colorant interactions. Techniques are described by which allow image data to be efficiently collected and stored to support a wide range of defect processing techniques. Defect processing may be performed in parallel with print job operations using spare processor CPU cycles and/or may be performed off-line by either the printing system processor or a separate defect processing system. Detected print quality defects may be corrected for using one or more interpolation techniques.