Printing Ink Calculator
Measure CMYK ink coverage, then work out ink use and cost for the run.
or browse filesdrop an image here or paste
Measure CMYK ink coverage, then work out ink use and cost for the run.
or browse filesdrop an image here or paste
Drop in the artwork and this ink calculator measures how much of each process colour it uses, then turns that into ink consumption and cost for the whole run. Coverage is measured on every pixel of your file at full resolution, not on a thumbnail, so the percentages are the real ones.
Give it the printed size, the number of copies, the ink laydown for your process and what you pay per litre, and it reports millilitres per copy, millilitres for the run, cost per copy and total ink cost.
Print work arrives as a PDF, so drop the PDF in directly. Every page is rendered and measured, and the page navigation under the preview walks through them so you can find the heavy pages. The page size is read out of the PDF itself and fills in the print size for you, which removes the input people most often get wrong.
The totals treat one copy as the whole document: a 24-page brochure costs 24 pages of ink per copy, and the run multiplies that by the number of copies. The coverage bars always describe the page you are looking at, while the ink and cost figures always describe the whole document, so paging around never changes the total.
A PDF is read in your browser like everything else here, and nothing is uploaded.
Each of the four channels is reported on its own from 0 to 100%. Total area coverage, usually shortened to TAC, is the four added together, so it runs from 0 to 400%. A page with 60% cyan, 50% magenta, 45% yellow and 70% black has a TAC of 225%.
TAC is the number a press operator checks against a limit. Coated offset stock is commonly held near 300%, uncoated and newsprint far lower, because past the limit the ink stops drying properly, sets off onto the next sheet and blocks in the stack. If your TAC reads high here, that is the figure to take back to the separation.
Page coverage quoted by office printers is a different, gentler number: it usually means the average of the channels rather than the sum, so a 225% TAC is about 56% average page coverage. Both are on this page, so use whichever your supplier asks for.
Coverage alone cannot tell you millilitres. You also need how thick a film your process lays down at 100% of one channel, which this calculator calls laydown, in millilitres per square metre.
Offset is the one you can derive from first principles: an ink film about one micron thick spread over a square metre is one cubic centimetre, which is 1 ml/m². That is the default. Flexo and inkjet lay down more, and the presets are starting points rather than gospel.
If you print flexo, use your own number. Ink consumption in flexo comes from the anilox: take the anilox volume in cm³/m² (BCM x 1.55 if your rolls are specified in BCM), multiply by the transfer efficiency your press actually achieves, and type that into the laydown field. That makes the calculation yours rather than a generic estimate, and it is the honest way to do flexo ink consumption for a job.
The maths is deliberately simple and visible: ink per copy = coverage x printed area x laydown, applied per channel and added up. Nothing is hidden, so you can sanity-check any figure it gives you.
Toner is sold and specified by weight rather than volume, but the coverage half of the job is identical. Enter your toner laydown in grams per square metre in the laydown field and read every result as grams instead of millilitres; the arithmetic is the same. Cost per litre then means cost per kilogram.
This is an estimate from your file, and it is honest about its limits. It reads your image as RGB and converts to CMYK with the standard formula, which is not the same as a colour-managed separation through a specific ICC profile with its own GCR and black generation, so a RIP may land a few points away. It also cannot know about press make-ready waste, ink left in the duct, spot colours, varnish or white underprint on film.
PDFs carry an extra caveat worth stating plainly. A print-ready PDF is usually already CMYK, but it has to be rendered to RGB before it can be measured in a browser, so its numbers make a round trip out of CMYK and back. Any spot or Pantone separation is reported as its CMYK approximation rather than as its own ink, and overprint is not simulated. For a rough quote or for comparing two jobs that is fine; for a contract price, use your RIP's own ink report.
Pages are rendered at around 150 dpi, which matters more than it sounds: vector artwork has no pixels of its own, and rendering it too coarsely lets thin black text and hairlines blur toward grey and understate the black. At the resolution used here a page of hairlines covering a true 25% of the sheet measures 24.99%, so fine detail is counted properly.
Treat the output as a solid estimate for quoting and comparing jobs, not as a substitute for your RIP's own ink report. Everything runs in your browser and no file is uploaded.
Open the image here and the coverage appears immediately: cyan, magenta, yellow and black each as a percentage, plus the total area coverage of all four. It is measured across every pixel of the file, so a photo and a line drawing are both handled correctly.
Multiply coverage by the printed area and by your ink laydown, then by the number of copies. That is exactly what this page does once you enter the size, the copies and the laydown for your process.
Coated offset work is usually kept at or below about 300%, with uncoated stock and newsprint needing considerably less. Ask your printer for their limit, because it depends on the press, the stock and the drying method.
Use your anilox volume rather than a generic figure. Convert the anilox to cm³/m², multiply by the transfer efficiency your press achieves, and enter that as the laydown. The calculator then reports millilitres per copy and for the full run.
Yes. Drop the PDF in and every page is measured, with the page size taken from the file. The coverage bars show whichever page you are viewing and the ink totals cover the whole document. Because a PDF has to be rendered to RGB before it can be measured in a browser, treat the figures for a CMYK PDF as a solid estimate rather than a contract price.
One copy means every page, so the ink per copy is the sum across all pages, and the run multiplies that by the number of copies. Page through the document to find which pages are heaviest if you need to lighten one.
Yes. The coverage measurement is the same. Enter your toner laydown in grams per square metre and read the results as grams rather than millilitres.
No. The file is read in your own browser and never leaves your device.