Components
The parts of a CCE install and what each one does.
Components
A working CCE install is made of a handful of pieces. You don't need to think about most of them day-to-day — they just work. This page is a reference for when something is off and you want to know which piece to look at.
1. CCE.exe (system tray app)
Lives in your system tray. This is the main CCE process. It:
- Watches
%APPDATA%\CCE\output\for PDFs produced by the CCE Printer - Runs the color-pertinence analyzer on each PDF
- Forwards the processed PDF to your real printer (or opens it in Adobe for preview)
- Hosts the View Report window, the Settings dialog, and the Cost per Page dialog
Right-click the tray icon for: View Report, Settings, Exit.
2. CCE Printer (virtual printer)
A virtual printer that appears in every Windows print dialog. Created during install by renaming PDFCreator's default virtual printer.
When you print to CCE Printer, Windows writes a PDF to
%APPDATA%\CCE\output\ instead of sending it to a physical printer.
That PDF is what CCE picks up and processes.
3. PDFCreator (third-party companion)
PDFCreator is the open-source virtual-PDF-printer engine CCE depends on. It's installed silently during CCE setup. You only interact with it once — during Quickstart Step 2, to tell it to save automatically into CCE's watch folder.
You should NOT need to open PDFCreator after that initial setup.
4. CCE working folders
All under %APPDATA%\CCE\:
| Folder | What lives there |
|---|---|
output\ | Raw PDFs from PDFCreator. CCE watches this folder. Files here are short-lived — picked up and processed within ~2 seconds. |
processed\ | The processed (color-decision-applied) PDFs. These are forwarded to the physical printer or opened in Adobe. |
logs\ | Per-launch log files for CCE.exe. Useful for support. |
errors\ | PDFs that the analyzer couldn't process. Empty in normal operation. |
database\ | SQLite database of job history + savings totals. |
5. View Report window
Opens via tray icon → View Report. Shows:
- This Month total $ saved, pages converted, and jobs processed.
- All Time (Last Year) same totals on a 12-month window.
- A list of recent jobs with per-job timestamp, filename, page count, pages converted, and $ saved.
- ⚙ Set Cost per Page — opens the pricing dialog where you tell CCE what your print shop charges. Until you set this, every $ figure is $0.00.
- Export to Excel — exports the table you see for your records.
6. Settings dialog
Opens via tray icon → Settings. Controls:
Preview (default) opens the processed PDF in Adobe so you can review before printing. Print silently forwards to a real printer.
Which physical printer to send to when using Print mode.
The Phase and Slider settings are advanced engine controls. Default values are appropriate for most users.
7. Cost per Page dialog
Opens from the View Report window → ⚙ Set Cost per Page. Two inputs:
- Cost per colored page
- Cost per B&W page
These are what your print shop charges. CCE computes $ saved = pages converted × (color cost − B&W cost) for every new job from this point forward.
Pricing changes apply to NEW jobs only. Jobs already in the report table keep whatever savings they were originally logged with.
8. CCE registry footprint (advanced)
For IT admins who need to know what registry keys CCE touches:
HKCU\Software\pdfforge\PDFCreator\Settings\…— CCE writes the PDFCreator profile keys on first launch so PDFCreator auto-saves into%APPDATA%\CCE\output\without popping a save dialog. See Troubleshooting → Save dialog pops up if these writes ever drift out of sync.
CCE does not write to HKLM. CCE does not modify printer drivers.
CCE does not register browser plugins, shell extensions, or scheduled tasks.