Carbon contamination is a significant issue with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) masks because it lowers throughput and has potential effects on imaging performance. Current carbon contamination research is primarily focused on the lifetime of the multilayer surfaces, determined by reflectivity loss and reduced throughput in EUV exposure tools. However, contamination on patterned EUV masks can cause additional effects on absorbing features and can affect the printed images. In this work, various carbon contamination experiments were performed to study the impact between contamination topography and observed imaging performance. Lithographic simulation using calculated aerial images and experimentally determined resist parameters was performed and compared to the printing results to estimate the allowed carbon thickness with critical dimension compensation applied to the mask.