1. A model-based, halftone independent method for characterizing a printer equipped with a: plurality of halftone screens, comprising a static offline step and a dynamic online step, where the offline step includes: at reference time to, printing a target set of color patches where the patches are halftone independent colorant overlap patterns and that each colorant assumes only values from a binary set, measuring the target of patches using a spectral measurement device; deriving a binary printer model using said measurements; obtaining a predicted printer response for a given color halftone screen based on the said binary printer model; comparing a true measured response of the printer using the halftone screen with the predicted response to derive a correction factor corresponding to the halftone screen such that the correction factor maps the said predicted response to the true measured response; and the dynamic online step comprising at any time t n : printing a target set of color patches where the patches are colorant overlap patters wherein each colorant assumes only values from a binary set; measuring the said target of patches using a spectral measurement device; deriving a binary printer model using said measurements; obtaining a predicted printer response for a given color halftone screen based on the said binary printer model; and applying the correction factor obtained in the said offline step to the said predicted printer response to obtain an estimate of a true printer response.