Patent ID: 7130474

Claim:
A method for rendering and compressing a digital image for display on a display device; said display device having a display resolution less than that of the digital image, using a display palette for rendering the digital image, and connecting with a transmission channel imposing a limit on a maximum file size; said method comprising the steps of: (a) resizing the digital image to the display resolution to produce a display-sized image; (b) quantizing the display-sized image to the display palette with an error diffusion process that produces an error diffused image according to a predetermined error diffusion rate; (c) losslessly compressing the error diffused image to produce a compressed image having a file size; (d) comparing the file size to the maximum file size and, if the file size is less than the maximum file size, transmitting the compressed image to the display; (e) if the file size is greater than the maximum file size, but less than another predetermined file size that is greater than the maximum file size, reducing the error diffusion rate by a predetermined amount in order to reduce the file size and then repeating steps subsequent to step (a) on the display-sized image at the reduced error diffusion rate; and (f) if the file size is greater than both the maximum file size and the predetermined file size, simplifying the display-sized image by reducing image detail to produce a simplified image and then repeating steps subsequent to step (a) on the simplified image until the file size is less than the maximum file size.