Framework for reducing toner utilization by controlling toner intensity

A multifunction device comprising:

• a control system comprising a processor, said processor comprising a digital image processor;
• a user interface connected to said control system;
• and
• an image output device connected to said processor, said user interface providing user selection of a level of toner savings for said image output device, said processor receiving digitized pixels for an image comprising color planes of different colors, said digitized pixels comprising continuous image data,
• said digital image processor applying based on user selection post-processing to said digitized pixels of said continuous image data and/or applying based on an indicia on the image a reduction in overall toner usage by lowering the energy applied to create a latent image by:
• using a storage unit with an output value for different patterns of pixel data, where each output value indicates a pulse width power to charge a region of an image bearing member;
• sensing whether a tag that represents a toner saving mode is embedded in the image;
• wherein the tag is added to the print job during creation of a document forming the print job, added to the print job by a document manager, or added to the print job by a user using a local user interface at the print system;
• in response to the embedded tag, then automatically updating the output value for different patterns of pixel data in the storage unit;
• and
• controlling an exposure device using the output value for different patterns of pixel data in the storage unit to create at least one latent image at the image bearing member;
• wherein controlling the exposure device reduces applied energy to create the at least one latent image while maintaining number of pixels of the received image.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-readable instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to execute toner consumption reduction in a printing system, comprising:

• displaying user selective levels of toner savings for said printing system at a user interface connected to said processor;
• and
• using a storage unit with an output value for different patterns of pixel data, where each output value indicates a pulse width power to charge a region of an image bearing member at the printing system;
• receiving a print job comprising an image, wherein the print job is received as a PDL file;
• sensing whether a tag that represents a toner saving mode is embedded in the image;
• wherein the tag is added to the print job during creation of a document forming the print job, added to the print job by a document manager, or added to the print job by a user using a local user interface at the print system;
• automatically updating the output value for different patterns of pixel data in the storage unit in response to the embedded tag;
• automatically applying based on user selection post-processing to the image in the print job;
• and
• controlling an exposure device using the output value for different patterns of pixel data in the storage unit to create at least one latent image at the image bearing member;
• wherein the output value is an exposure time or luminous energy of the exposure device;
• wherein the tag is at least one of a barcode, a glyph, text, an image, and coded symbology;
• wherein the controlling is performed by a pulse controller connected to the storage unit to control a pulse width of a laser scanning unit to adjust the energy applied to the image bearing member;
• wherein the post-processing is scaling and generating a mask for a selected level of toner saving on the image to produce a resultant image.