A color management system for a printing system includes a color management service that controls quality control operations, such as calibration and quality checks, over a plurality of printing devices. The color management service generates a target print job having a quality control target made of color patches. The color management service also encodes metadata within the target print job using a control strip. The control strip encodes the metadata using different color patches and color intensities. The control strip is scanned at the printing device to decode the metadata and enable a user interface to complete the quality control operation.