Patent ID: 7302006

Claim:
Apparatus for performing compression on an image, the apparatus comprising an encoder for adaptively partitioning the image into regions, wherein the regions include smaller regions and larger regions and the partitioned image is represented by a data structure that clusters the smaller regions into the larger regions, and wherein the data structure is generated from a previously generated data structure having previously clustered regions; associating a list of colors and a measure of compressibility with each of the regions in the data structure; determining that palettization will provide a reduced bit rate for at least one of the regions in the data structure as compared to non-palettization compression of the at least one of the regions in the data structure; selectively performing palettization on the at least one of the regions in the data structure to compress the at least one of the regions in response to the determination that palettization provides the reduced bit rate for the at least one of the regions in the data structure; and selectively performing non-palettization compression on at least another of the regions in the data structure in response to determining that palettization of the at least another of the regions in the data structure does not provide a reduced bit rate for the at least another of the regions in the data structure.