Patent ID: 8878952

Claim:
A method of compressing mosaiced digital image data, comprising: with a plurality of digital image sensor pixels, generating mosaiced image data, the mosaiced image data comprising at least: first pixel data corresponding to first pixels of the plurality of sensor pixels and that represents light corresponding to a first color; and second pixel data corresponding to second pixels of the plurality of sensor pixels and that represents light corresponding to a second color, the second color being different than the first color; and pre-emphasizing the mosaiced image data according to an algorithm that reduces pixel data values for relatively bright pixels and increases pixel data values for relatively dark pixels; for each second pixel of a plurality of the second pixels, and based on values of the first pixel data corresponding to two or more of the first pixels, transforming the second pixel data corresponding to the second pixel, said two or more of the first pixels located on opposite sides of and in the vicinity of the second pixel; subsequent to said transforming and said pre-emphasizing, compressing the transformed second pixel data; and storing the compressed, transformed second pixel data on a memory device, wherein the pre-emphasized, transformed second pixel data are compressed and stored instead of the original second pixel data, regardless of the values of the transformed second pixel data.