Patent ID: 7812980

Claim:
A method for managing a print shop system, the print shop system including a plurality of printers including one or more color printers and one or more black and white printers, the method being implemented on a computer connected to the printers, the method comprising: (a) obtaining a source document to be printed, the source document including a plurality of pages each having one or more paper attributes and a color property, wherein the paper attributes specify characteristics of a medium on which the page is to be printed; (b) obtaining an N-up parameter N and a duplex parameter D for each page of the source document, wherein the N-up parameter N specifies a number of pages of the source document to be printed on a side of a single sheet of medium; (c) grouping pages of the source document into one or more groups based on the parameters N and D, each group containing K=N*D or fewer pages which have identical N and D values and are to be printed on a single sheet of medium; and (d) determining whether all pages within each group have identical paper attributes, and if pages within any group have non-identical paper attributes, submitting the source document to be printed either on one or more color printers or on one or more black and white printers but not on a mixture of color printers and black and white printers.