1. A method for estimating an amount of color in a document, the method comprising: receiving a binary input color image of said document, wherein each color plane of said binary color image is received at an offset of other planes; dividing each color plane of said binary input image into M×N tiles; examining each color plane to determine an on-pixel count for each tile; aggregating said on-pixel counts for each tile to obtain a total on-pixel count for each color plane; and estimating an amount of color in said binary input image based on said total on-pixel counts for each color plane.