Abstract: In a digital copier in which the copies are made with a reciprocating ink-jet printhead, the original image to be copied is pre-scanned at high speed and low resolution, to identify an area in the original image having white space. If the white-space area in the original image is sufficiently large, the action of the printhead can be adapted to skip the corresponding area in the copy sheet in the printing process, thus increasing the overall throughput of the digital copier. An analogous technique can be used to identify non-halftone or non-color portions of an original image, which can be printed with fewer than a maximum number of passes of the printhead over a specific area of the copy sheet.