Automatic insertion of special pages into black and white digital printing jobs

A print shop environment including multiple printers (122HV, 122C) under the control of computer resources (116, 118, 120) to automatically print complex documents is disclosed. According to the disclosed embodiment, a companion plug-in application operates in combination with an authoring application, to permit a human operator to select certain special pages, such as those to be printed by a color printer (122C). These pages are assigned to a media type that is not valid at a high-volume printer (122HV), causing an invalid job configuration for that page. The special pages are printed at the color printer (122C), and that output is loaded into an inserter (135) in the high-volume printer (122HV). The main job is modified to interpret each of the invalid job configuration pages to insert commands, so that the special pages can be inserted by the inserter (135) at the correct location in the output job, when printed by the high-volume printer (122HV). The complex documents are thus be generated and printed in an automated fashion.