Method and system embodiments herein add at least one trap area between abutting objects on an image to be printed by a printing engine. This trap area includes a central region between two outer regions. The method/system establishes a target toner concentration for pixels within the trap area based on toner concentrations of the abutting objects and corrects the target toner concentration to account for irregularities of the outer regions of the trap area to produce a corrected toner concentration for pixels in the trap area. The method/system performs this correction by first empirically testing the printing engine to establish a lookup table of correction values of the outer regions prior to a printing operation. Then, during the printing operation, the method determines a size relationship (weighting) between the central region and the outer regions for the trap area and calculates the corrected toner concentration.