US Patent 9542130 Mask based toner reduction

Systems and methods for reducing toner usage. A print job is received into a print engine. The print engine comprises a processor, and the print job comprises an image. A halftone screen is applied to the pixels of continuous image data for the image. The processor produces a threshold array of pixel values based on the halftone screen. The processor generates a mask based on the halftone screen for each color plane of the image. The processor applies the mask to the threshold array, creating a modified threshold array. The modified threshold array corresponds to relatively reduced toner usage for rendering the image.