In-situ measurements are made by a toner area coverage sensor on test patches from a single control dot screen developed on a cleanable surface and are observed by a photoreceptor. The density of patches for other dot screens is estimated from the measured density of the control dot screen error of each measured patch by using a scaling factor, which is different for each separation and patchy density. This error is then added to the target tone reproduction curve (TRC) for each non-control dot screen to give an estimated density for each of the other dot screens. The TRC are then developed/updated using the estimated patch densities for each of the other dot screens. This substantially reduces the amount of toner and processing resources utilized.