A printing system includes a printing device, a color management server, and a client device. An estimated ink use is determined for a print job within printing system. After printing operations, a baseline average ink use is determined for a set of printed pages of the print job. If the baseline average ink use varies from the estimated ink use, then a corrective action is taken to adjust ink use to be closer to the estimated ink use. The corrective action is a global corrective action for the entire document of the print job or a targeted action that adjusts only specified features or pages of the document.

A printing system includes a printing mechanism. The printing mechanism is configured to perform printing. The printing system stores a plurality of print jobs in a storage, and receives selections of two or more print jobs to be executed as two or more target jobs from among the plurality of print jobs stored in the storage. The printing system determines a total fee to be charged for executing the two or more target jobs, and performs a settlement related process related to settlement of the determined total fee. The printing system executes the two or more target jobs to print images by using the printing mechanism in response to completion of settlement of the total fee.

An information processing apparatus includes a processor configured to: transmit authentication information to a first image forming apparatus; acquire, from the first image forming apparatus, job information acquired by the first image forming apparatus from a server using the authentication information, the job information being information on one or more jobs corresponding to the authentication information; cause a display to display a screen presenting the acquired job information; receive, on the displayed screen, selection of one or more jobs to print using the first image forming apparatus; and transmit selection information indicating one or more selected jobs selected by the selection to the first image forming apparatus to instruct the first image forming apparatus to acquire the one or more selected jobs from the server.

A print material usage estimation device may comprise a first usage meter to measure a first print material usage associated with print material deposition on a print medium over a specified time period. 5 The print material usage estimation device may further comprise a second usage meter to measure a second print material usage associated with other printer processes over the specified time period. The print material usage estimation device may further comprise a ratio calculator to calculate a ratio between second print material usage and first print material usage over the specified time period. The print 10 material usage estimation device may further comprise an estimator to estimate total print material usage for an instructed print job based on a predetermined first print material usage for the print job and the calculated ratio.

A method of producing printed products uses at least one computer and at least one input device for controlling at least one machine for processing printing substrates. The input device receives technical and economic data of at least one print shop and the computer receives customer preferences relating to print jobs by using the input device. Based on the technical and economic data of the print shop, the computer calculates a simulation of possible print jobs producible in the print shop. The computer takes into account the results of the simulation and the customer preference inputs and generates matching offers for print jobs. The computer compares the generated offers with customer print jobs and, if a match is found between an offer and a customer's print job, the print job is processed by the machine for processing printing substrates.

An image processing apparatus includes a job execution device that executes jobs, an aggregated data generator that generates aggregated data indicating an aggregated result of a quantity for each type of job executed by the job execution device, and an aggregated data transmitter that transmits the aggregated data generated by the aggregated data generator to a charge amount calculation system, in which, in a case where the unit price of the job is changed, the aggregated data generator separately generates the aggregated data of the job before the change of the unit price and the aggregated data after the change of the unit price and stores the unit price corresponding to the generated aggregated data, and the aggregated data transmitter associates the aggregated data with the unit price corresponding to this aggregated data and transmits the association result to the charge amount calculation system.

An electronic device and a document processing system both with cost saving function are disclosed. The electronic device performs a blank page counting process on a received first document file data containing blank pages, in order to generate cost information of non-blank pages and display it for reference. With the above electronic device, it is able to save the cost of outputting blank pages and avoid waste of paper to achieve the purpose of cost saving. The document processing system includes the above electronic device, which is connected to the document processing system via a network.

An image forming apparatus includes a storage unit that stores a plurality of print jobs, an acquisition unit that acquires, when a desired print job is selected from the plurality of print jobs stored in the storage unit, a print setting of the selected print job, a determination unit that determines whether a print-cost-reducing print setting exists that reduces a print cost more than a print cost of the print setting acquired by the acquisition unit, and a changing unit that, if it is determined that the print-cost-reducing setting exists, enables changing the print setting of the selected print job to the print-cost-reducing print setting.

Examples of a user interface (UI) for depletion level selection are described herein. In some examples, a control element is displayed in a UI to select a color depletion level for a color printing substance of a printing device. A predicted cost-per-page to print is displayed in the UI based on based on a selected color depletion level. A color map for the printing device is determined based on the selected color depletion level and a separate black depletion level.

A printing system receives print jobs having pages that are separated by different levels of ink use to print the pages. The number of pages for different ink use levels are determined as well as the cost estimation to print the different pages. Ink use and cost estimates are provided on a granular level as opposed to overall ink use and costs for printing a print job. Modifications are made to one or more pages to lower ink use for those specific pages as opposed to the print job as a whole. The printing system displays the different ink use levels as well as the cost estimates.