Image Reduction

The ability to reduce or enlarge images is common on copiers.  When copying a book, you can often get two original pages on to one side of the copied sheet.  Because reduction works in two dimensions, you only need reduce by 30% (to 70%) to cut in half the area of an image.  While reproducing entire standard 8.5x11 pages requires a 35% reduction (to 65%), books often have smaller than standard pages and most documents have larger than necessary margins, so the reduction can usually be less than this.

Image reduction is also possible with printing.  Many word processing and presentation preparation applications can print two, four, or more "pages" on each output page.  This is called "2-up", "4-up", etc. printing.  With the high quality of current printing technology, considerable reduction is possible while maintaining readability.  Also, while printing it is possible to reduce margins between the text and the edge of the page, and reduce the point size used.  This is particularly useful for widely reproduced documents, and when small changes can avoid an additional sheet of paper.  Image reduction saves imaging costs as well as paper costs, so that every pound of paper avoided saves considerably more than does a pound avoided through duplexing alone (for example).

How much can image reduction save?  As an example, consider a 4-page document on a printer that costs 2.5 cents/image and paper that costs 0.5 cents/sheet.  The document would cost 12 cents traditionally, which could be reduced to 11 cents by duplexing (8% savings), to 6 cents by "2-up" printing (50% savings), or to 5.5 cents with both (54% savings).  Printing it 4-up only takes one side of one sheet and would reduce the cost to 3 cents (75% savings).
 

Paper Reuse