Common rules and feedback an inking unit with ink screw

There are provided a method and a system for automatically controlling color screws for a printing machine. The color screws are adapted to control the ink supply to each of the zones, which are located side by side across the width of an inking roller. The system uses forward and feedback loops to dynamically adjust the ink supply based on a pixel count of the image content. The pixel count is looking far enough ahead in the video stream to make the adjustment to the ink screw time to spread by the inking system to affect the color output on inking the imaging drum. The feedback of the color density obtained at the control cut-outs on the imaging drum is used in addition to the pixel count to control the motors of the ink screws. The feedback is also used to update the propagation delay and the dynamic model of the painting device used to determine how much the ink screws have to be adjusted based on the pixel count stream.