Preton Ltd Granted U.S. Patent for Printing Technology

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Preton Ltd Granted U.S. Patent for Printing Technology

Israeli company Preton Ltd recently announced that it’s been granted a U.S. patent for its Pixel Optimizer technology. The Pixel Optimizer technology significantly reduces the amount of printer ink and toner used by recognizing overlapping pixels and not printing the unnecessary ones. This technology might seem almost pedantic, but in reality it can save companies up to hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.

Chief Executive Ori Eizenberg explains that paper printing is still popular, despite the increase in digital devices. Furthermore, he points out that printer companies make their real profits on the ink and toner, not on the sale of the printer. According to Gartner Inc analysts, ink and toner costs make up more than half the costs of operating printers for companies and even more for color printing. Eizenberg informally polled major companies shortly after founding Preton to see if they knew how much they spent on ink and toner. Eizenberg says, “All of them understood that it’s expensive but they had no visibility” as to their real costs.

This is where the Preton Pixel Optimizer technology comes in. Preton reports that enterprise-sized customers that use both its PretonSaver software and the Pixel Optimizer technology are realizing between 25 – 35 percent in monthly savings on printing costs. Spain’s government agency for its social security program uses Preton’s system and reports it’s been saving around $1.2 million each year since it started using it.

As companies look for more ways to reduce costs without cutting operating performance or quality, the potential to reduce the ongoing costs of ink and toner appreciably can be a significant win.

Eizenberg is also pleased with how the company’s new technology will solidify Preton’s place as an industry leader, “This patent award for our Pixel Optimizer technology will certainly contribute to maintaining our key position as the world leader in toner optimization technology.”

But How Do the Pages Look?

The technology works by not printing each pixel that would otherwise be printed. Clearly, the savings of this technology wouldn’t be valuable if the resulting printouts weren’t readable. According to the Eizenberg and customers, there is no loss of readability with the Pixel Optimizer technology. The reason for that is why the technology received a patent.

The Pixel Optimizer technology uses complex algorithms to identify pixels that overlap with other pixels. Pixels overlap because they’re square, but printers can only recognize circles. The printer overlaps the circles it sees to recreate the square. As a result, the printer wastes a lot of ink through its overlapping process. Part of the sophistication of the Pixel Optimizer technology is that it can recognize which pixels aren’t needed.

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October 9, 2012 at 8:33 AM