WHITE REGION IDENTIFICATION TO ACCELERATE IMAGE PROCESSING FOR COPIES

Provided herein is a method for accelerating the production of a standalone copy of a document by a peripheral device. The invention employs a white space map of the document to be copied. The map is generated by the ASIC chip, preferably at an early stage in the processing pipeline, and is used by the device to identify white areas of the outputted copy that do not require subsequent image processing calculations and do not require ink or toner markings on the paper. Use of the white space map allows the system to reduce the processing resources necessary to image process and subsequently physically print the copy, thus speeding up copy production.