Abstract: Methods and apparatus facilitate reductions in the time needed to generate a tangible output image by intelligently moving all or part of the rendering process from the formatter of a destination imaging device to an external device, such as the source device or a network server associated with the imaging device. These external devices generally have processors capable of processing instructions at a higher rate than the processor of the imaging device formatter and are thus capable of processing the image page description faster than the imaging device formatter. One or more performance factors can be utilized in determining whether and to what extent processing of the image page description should be performed by the external device.

Abstract: Image page contents are reordered based on image primitive types without altering the appearance of the rendered page. The reordering facilitates improving the locality of data or of the code executed in processing that data within the print stream. Where the imaging device is permitted to render like image primitives in sequence, the device's formatter is more likely to experience a cache hit for the desired code or data such that it's processor will experience less wait time by not having to access bulk memory as often.