Ink Saving Report

Ink saving solutions usually guarantee to reduce the ink consumption up to a certain degree, depending on the printing process and the used media, but what is the actual monetary benefit for the printing process and media you are using? Find out with our Ink Saving Report Tool.

The GMG Ink Saving Report Tool is a small external application allowing you to estimate the monetary benefit of GMG InkOptimizer profiles. If the option Calculate Ink Savings is selected in a PDF Processing template, GMG ColorServer will automatically create ink saving calculations for all files processed by this template. These calculations are saved on the server, and can be loaded and presented by the GMG Ink Saving Report Tool.

Using this option requires ripping of vector objects both of the input documents and the output documents. This leads to intense calculations, depending on the number and complexity of vector or PDF objects. The processing time is increased. Jobs will stay longer in the job list, even though the output PDF might already be sent to the output folder. This option also affects the overall computer performance.

The ink saving report can provide only an approximation of the actual ink savings. Ripping the data leads to a conversion of RGB objects to the default CMYK color space. Spot colors are excluded from the calculation. (If you want to include spot colors, you will need to convert them to CMYK before the GMG InkOptimizer profile is applied.) Processing steps following GMG ColorServer such as gradation corrections applied in CTP RIP software might also affect ink consumption. It is recommended to use a PDF containing only CMYK objects to achieve the best approximation.

  1. In the GMG ColorServer client, go to the Resources tabbed page, and open the PDF Processing template which you want to use to determine your potential ink savings.
  2. Under General, select the Calculate Ink Savings option.
  3. Create jobs using a Conversion template using an MX4 InkOptimizer profile and a PDF Processing template with the enabled Calculate Ink Savings option.
    Only jobs fulfilling both criteria will undergo an ink saving calculation.
  4. After having processed the desired quantity of files, you can download the ink saving data from the server.

After at least one document has been processed with the template, you can download the data from the server.

  1. In the GMG ColorServer client, click the gearwheel button on the upper right corner of the main window, and click Export Ink Report.
  2. Save it to a custom location.
  1. From the Windows Start Menu, start the GMG Ink Saving Report Tool.
    The main page of the tool is displayed showing a statistics table with all processed jobs of the day. Before loading the data from the server, the table will be empty and the tool will show an error message.
  2. Click the Open button and select the data file you downloaded from the server.
  3. Use the calendar caption on the toolbar to modify the time range.
  4. Click the Filter on the toolbar and select the template which you want to assess.
  5. On the Edit menu, select Settings.
    The Settings dialog box is displayed, containing the parameters on which the ink saving calculations are based.
  6. Edit the default settings according to your specific situation to render the calculations more accurate.
  7. Click Save to confirm your changes.
  8. On File menu, click the Create Report button.
    The data of the statistics table is computed and channeled into an informative cost calculation.

For each job, the statistic shows the amount of ink used for each separation without GMG InkOptimizer profiles (C/M/Y/K orig) and with GMG InkOptimizer profiles (C/M/Y/K opt). The Savings are listed in percent and in the selected currency.