Patent ID: 8243340

Claim:
In a digital image computing device, a method of pre-processing an image for improved data compression by exposing one or more common patterns in the image data that are typically unrecognizable by a bit stream processor when the image data is displayed in color channel interleaved form, the method comprising: receiving a digital image represented as a plurality of pixels, wherein each pixel is defined by a first color space including at least two color channels that are typically displayed such that the layout of the plurality of pixels appears as an interleaved sequence of the at least two color channels; separating the digital image into a planar data source for each of the at least two color channels by splitting each color component of each pixel into the planar data source for the corresponding color channel; sub-sampling a particular planar data source by: selecting a subset of the color components in the particular planar data source; averaging the values from each of the color components in the selected subset; assigning the average value to each of the color components of the selected subset to create a recognizable pattern for compression among the selected subset of color components in the particular data source; and assigning the average value to each of the color components of the selected subset including individually storing the average value for each of the color components of the selected subset prior to compression; sending the at least two planar data sources to the one or more data compression modules where each planar data source is separately compressed in order to more efficiently compress the digital image than when the digital image is in its interleaved form; and one or more of: converting a second color space to the first color space, the second color space having color channels of luminance and at least one chrominance component; identifying one or more areas within the at least two planar data sources where the image data can be altered for better pattern recognition; and based on one or more control settings, or based on the type of compressor used, modifying the areas by altering original image data to achieve even better redundancy or other recognizable sequences or patterns than without the manipulation, the modifying including sub-sampling such that at least a chrominance value for one color channel of a pixel is modified to match a chrominance value for another color channel of an adjacent pixel.