In accordance with the present invention, the efficiency of printing systems are improved by manipulating the print data stream (PDS), e.g., an AFP data stream (AFPDS) prior to communication to the printer. The methods generally involve manipulating a PDS prior to communication to a printer to provide a modified PDS which is more efficiently process by a printer. The PDS may be manipulated in a variety of ways, including combinations of in-line printer resource extraction, data parsing, insertion of printer control parameters, etc. In various embodiments, in-line printer resources may be extracted from the data stream and placed in a database for later access, or alternatively may be processed by software or algorithms to generate a modified resource which is reintroduced to the data stream.