On HP large format printers, Printerpoint provides several pieces of information that can help you verify that your Print Category MPS contract is profitable:
- Area
- Ink consumption
- Print Category
- Pixel Density
HP’s Print Categories provide a simple way to bill your customers for variable printing types on a single printer, with different costs for line drawings, low density images and high density images.
But with simplicity comes uncertainty - there is a good amount of variability in those categories and if your profit margins are tight, you may lose money when customers change their printing behavior.
To review per-job info, including print category and pixel density, go to the Billing Details page for your HP printer and look at the activity section.
What is Pixel Density?
Print Categories are defined by the number of printed pixels on a sheet of paper. The higher the density, the higher the category. The category settings are configurable, but the defaults are:
0-9%: Line Drawing
10-49%: Low Density Image (Map, GIS Image)
50-100%: High Density Image (Photo)
If your customers primarily print at the top of a category, you may want to adjust the category definitions slightly on the printer so you keep the contract profitable.
Example:
Pixel Density Caveats
Pixel Density is Job-based
Printerpoint displays a record of each print job, but some print jobs are broken into multiple line items if pages within the job are in different print categories.
It is important to review the job number column when looking at the pixel density vs print category columns.
In this example note that job 2527 contains two records - Low-density images and Monochrome CAD lines, with an average of 12% density between the two of them. While the job was primarily Monochrome CAD lines, the 83 sq feet of low density pushed the average density of the entire job above the 9% threshold. In these scenarios with multiple print categories within a single job, it is not possible to identify the pixel density per record.
Average Pixel Density
Average pixel density per square foot can be found by adding up the total area and using the pixel density column.
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