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Guided workflow variation

Coming soon for Windows. Feature preview.

Know the toner a job needsbefore it reaches the printer.

Cartridge yields are rated at a light, standard page, and real orders rarely look like that. InkQuote works through the file on your Windows PC and estimates what every page asks of each toner, so a heavy order gets priced as one.

Compare each page's estimated coverage with the 5 percent baseline behind cartridge yields, and price toner-hungry jobs as what they are, before printing.

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If this sounds like your week

Cartridge yields assume a page that looks nothing like your job.

Toner cartridge yields are commonly stated at about 5 percent coverage per colour, the light, mostly-text test pages behind the ISO/IEC 19752 and ISO/IEC 19798 yield methods. A plain business letter sits near that figure. A flyer with a photographic background can run many times higher on every colour, so the same cartridge produces far fewer sheets.

Where tooling usually breaks

Heavy coverage drains toner and margin together.

When a shop charges every sheet at one rate, light orders subsidise heavy ones. Full-bleed posters, photo books and dark slide decks can empty cartridges well before the rated yield on the box, and the gap surfaces weeks later as an unexpected supplies bill. Running a test print tells you the job looks right, not how much toner it consumed.

Where InkQuote lands

Read the coverage from the file, then price the toner.

InkQuote opens the PDF on your Windows PC and estimates cyan, magenta, yellow and black coverage for each page from the colour values it stores, then gives a document figure weighted by page area. Set each reading beside the 5 percent baseline your cartridge yields assume, choose a price per copy that covers it, and export the quote.

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What you get

Feature highlights

Per-page CMYK estimates

cyan, magenta, yellow, black and total coverage for every page of a PDF, with its size in points, so the heavy pages stand out before anything prints.

Native CMYK values

DeviceCMYK is measured as the file states it, so solid black text stays black ink only; grayscale counts as black, and RGB uses the PDF specification’s formula.

An area-weighted total

the All row weights every page by its area, so a document with mixed page sizes reads correctly and the total matches the paper.

Spot colours by name

named spot inks are converted through the file’s own tint transforms into the process figures and listed for each page and for the whole document.

Price per copy times copies

the Quote page turns a price per copy and a copy count into an estimate, in your Windows currency symbol, with the coverage it rests on beside it.

A one-page quote sheet, original untouched

export the page table, document total, spot colours, notes and quote as a new PDF, while the source PDF is opened read-only and nothing uploads.

Especially when

  • Estimate how much cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink or toner a PDF will use, page by page, before quoting the job
  • Measure the CMYK values a print file actually holds instead of a browser calculator’s RGB round trip
  • Turn coverage into a price per copy times copies and send the customer a one-page quote sheet
  • Keep customer artwork on the PC, with no upload, no account, and the original PDF untouched

Who benefits

Real-world scenarios

A photo-heavy flyer run

A restaurant orders 1,000 single-sided flyers with a full-bleed food photograph. The shop's standard flyer price assumes light coverage, and the owner suspects this design is nowhere near light.

InkQuote shows the page's cyan, magenta, yellow and black estimates far above the 5 percent each that cartridge yields assume. The shop raises the price per copy to match, and the quote sheet records the figures it was based on.

An office print room charging departments

An in-house print room charges departments for what they print, and one team regularly sends slide decks with dark full-page backgrounds that use far more toner than memos.

The print room opens each deck in InkQuote before printing and reads its coverage page by page, with black text and grayscale in the K column. Heavy decks are charged at a rate that reflects the toner they need.

Two versions of one design

A designer offers a client two layouts for an annual mailing, one on a white background and one on a dark background, and the client asks how much the printing cost will differ.

Each PDF goes through InkQuote in turn and gets its own quote sheet, so the client compares the two totals and the per-page figures, and the cost difference rests on numbers rather than a guess.

Deep dive

From toner coverage to a price per copy

Start from the yield baseline. Cartridge yields are commonly rated on standard test pages at around 5 percent coverage per colour, under ISO/IEC 19752 for monochrome toner and ISO/IEC 19798 for colour. Your supplies cost per page at that coverage is the cartridge price divided by its rated yield. That is the baseline you already know.

Read the job's coverage. Open the PDF in InkQuote. Each page gets a C %, M %, Y % and K % estimate, and the All row gives the document figure for each colour, weighted by page area. A page at 20 percent black asks for roughly four times the black toner of the 5 percent test page.

Scale the baseline. Divide each colour's job coverage by 5 to get a multiplier, apply it to that colour's supplies cost per page, and add the colours together. For a job averaging 15 percent cyan, 12 percent magenta, 10 percent yellow and 18 percent black, the multipliers are 3, 2.4, 2 and 3.6. Yields in daily use move with the machine and its settings, so treat the result as a working estimate and tune it with your own records.

Count the pages in a copy. The Quote page treats one copy as one printed set of all pages, so the price per copy you type should cover every page in the file. The document figures already include every page, weighted by size.

Watch the black channel. Text set in solid black, whether the file stores it as CMYK, grayscale or RGB, is measured as black toner only, so text-heavy jobs keep their colour figures low. Grayscale images and fills count as black as well.

Keep the figures with the job. Export quote sheet saves one page with the page table, the document total, any spot colours, the notes and the quote, as a new PDF. File it with the job ticket so the next reprint starts from the same numbers.

Keep the artwork private. InkQuote runs on your Windows PC with no network access, and the customer's PDF is opened read-only, so nothing about the job leaves the shop.

Feature preview

Explore the intended workflow

Per-page CMYK estimates

cyan, magenta, yellow, black and total coverage for every page of a PDF, with its size in points, so the heavy pages stand out before anything prints.

Native CMYK values

DeviceCMYK is measured as the file states it, so solid black text stays black ink only; grayscale counts as black, and RGB uses the PDF specification’s formula.

An area-weighted total

the All row weights every page by its area, so a document with mixed page sizes reads correctly and the total matches the paper.

Head-to-head

How InkQuote compares

Feature InkQuote Printer job log Test print Flat rate per page
When you know Before anything prints After the job has run After a sample is printed Never measured
Coverage per colour C, M, Y and K estimated for every page Usually page or click counts Judged by eye Left out of the price
Result for each page One row per page, with its size and notes Per job Only the sample pages Same price for every page
What you keep A one-page quote sheet PDF with the figures A usage report from the device A printed sample A price list

FAQ

Straight answers—no glossary dump

What is the 5 percent coverage standard for toner?

Cartridge page yields are commonly stated at about 5 percent coverage per colour, measured on standard test pages defined in ISO/IEC 19752 for monochrome toner and ISO/IEC 19798 for colour. A page at 5 percent is mostly white with some text. Jobs with photos or solid backgrounds run far higher, and InkQuote's per-page estimates show how far a job sits from that baseline.

How do I estimate the toner coverage of a PDF before printing?

Open the PDF in InkQuote. It measures each page from the colour values in the file and shows C %, M %, Y %, K % and Total % for every page, with an area-weighted total in the All row. Compare those figures with the coverage your cartridge yields assume, and set the price per copy on the Quote page to match.

Does black text count as black toner only?

Yes. Text set in solid black is measured as black only, whether the file stores it in CMYK, grayscale or RGB, so a text-heavy document picks up no phantom cyan, magenta or yellow. Grayscale images and fills count as black too. Text deliberately set in a four-colour rich black is measured as the four values the file states.

What happens to the original PDF?

It is opened for reading only and stays exactly as it was. InkQuote measures the file from a read-only stream and draws its page previews the same way. The quote sheet is always a new PDF that you name in the Windows Save dialog, which suggests the source name followed by InkQuote estimate.pdf, and a save that would land on the open PDF, or on any file in the Recent list, is refused with a sentence naming the file.

Where does the artwork go, and how do I get InkQuote?

InkQuote is coming soon to the Microsoft Store for Windows and is not available to download or purchase yet. Use the email form on its product page to join the waitlist, then confirm your email address. We will send launch updates when there is news. No payment is taken.

Related pages

See which pages cost colour clicks, before the job runs. Every page's C, M, Y and K, in one table. From customer PDF to quote sheet, at the counter.