Abstract: Methods and systems for estimating single or multi-colored toner coverage on a printed page. One method includes generating color plane bitmaps corresponding to each color in a contone bitmap and calculating pixel coverage values for each of the color plane contone bitmaps. Another method includes receiving image data to be printed, generating color separations for the image data corresponding to available toner colors, printing each color separation on a printed page, scanning each printed page comprising the color separation and calculating toner coverage on each of the scanned printed pages.

Abstract: Artificial toner consumption is triggered to minimize the incidence of “conditioned” toner when a comparison of the rate of toner consumption to the mechanical activity of the electrophotographic printing device indicates that the toner consumption rate is too low. The artificial toner consumption operation may be achieved through a dummy print operation where an intentionally un-printed image is formed on a photoconductive drum, but the corresponding toner is routed to appropriate waste toner reservoir(s) and the image is not printed on the recording medium. The dummy print toner may be cleaned from the photoconductive drum without being transferred to an intermediate transfer medium and/or may be cleaned from the intermediate transfer medium, both without transferring the toner to the recording medium. The dummy print operation may correspond to a next normally occurring interdocument gap or a dedicated dummy print period inserted between print jobs.