Patent ID: 7755800

Claim:
A method for estimating the amount of color content in a document to determine a billing strategy for that document, the method comprising: receiving a document containing image content; scanning said image content to determine whether any color content is present; and in response to no color content being present determining a billing strategy based on black/white, otherwise comprising: subdividing the gray level range for each color plane and the black plane into a plurality of regions, said color planes being subdivided into 2 n regions, and said black plane being subdivided into 2 m regions, said amount of subdividing not having to be the same for each plane; assigning values from 0 to 2 n −1 to each color pixel, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, based upon a range of said subdivided color plane into which the pixel falls, said assigning being such that 8-bit color pixels are reduced to n-bits where n is a number less than 8; assigning values from 0 to 2 m −1 to each black pixel, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, based upon a range of said subdivided black plane into which the pixel falls, said assigning being such that 8-bit black pixels are reduced to m-bits where m is a number less than 8; examining pixels of said image content to determine the color of each pixel; counting the number of pixels to obtain a cumulative total pixel count for each color for said image content; and dynamically determining a color billing strategy for said document based on said cumulative total pixel counts.