What is disclosed is a novel system and method for determining printer performance in terms of image quality defects over a large complex set of conditions based on measurements taken over a small simple set of conditions, thus reducing the amount of time, effort, and wasted paper required to obtain the data. The present system and method effectively utilizes a predictive model that predicts noise measurements of multi-separations from those of single-separation colors and/or a subset of the multi-separations. Because a model is used to comprehend color performance over the entire gamut, the number of patches is reduced. This reduction enables the method to be used within a machine to dynamically characterize the device's image quality performance. Various embodiments have been disclosed.