Patent ID: 7800768

Claim:
A printing assist system for assisting printing based on print specification information including a specification of printed material, comprising: a print mode storage that stores a plurality of print modes each including the specification of the printed material and setting of a printing device; print specification information acquiring means for acquiring the print specification information; printing device information acquiring means for acquiring printing device information representing a device capability for each of a plurality of the printing devices; print mode retrieving means for retrieving a plurality of the print modes in the print mode storage based on the print specification information acquired by the print specification information acquiring means and the printing device information acquired by the printing device information acquiring means; evaluation calculation means for calculating, for each of the print modes retrieved by the print mode retrieving means, a plurality of evaluation items relative to other print modes, the plurality of evaluation items including a print speed deviation value, a printing cost deviation value, and an image quality deviation value; a selection history information storage that stores selection history information that is a history of selection of the print mode by a user and includes the print speed deviation value, the printing cost deviation value, and the image quality deviation value of the present print mode; and print mode offering means for offering the plurality of print modes retrieved by the print mode retrieving means based on the selection history information in the selection history information storage and the print speed deviation value, the printing cost deviation value, and the image quality deviation value calculated by the evaluation value calculation means for each print mode of the plurality of print modes retrieved by the print mode retrieving means.