1. A method for determining a marking material usage estimate for a print job to be performed by a printing system, the method is implemented in a computer system comprising one or more processors configured to execute one or more computer program modules, the method comprising: receiving compressed data of an image of the print job, wherein the image having a plurality of image pixels each having an image pixel intensity value and wherein the image pixels are transformed into the compressed data using a compression scheme; obtaining marking material usage statistics by partially decompressing the compressed data so as to obtain average pixel intensity values of the image pixels in the image; and determining the marking material usage estimate for the print job using the obtained marking material usage statistics.