COMPRESSION FOR MULTI-LEVEL SCREENED IMAGES

A method for compressing screened image data for printing. The data is generated by tiling an image with multi-pixel cells. The pixels within any one cell may or may not be rescanned to be better fit for compression. The method allows for selection between two compression paths, one which has no loss (24), the other which is lossy (26). Once the data is compressed, the information is stored in a buffer (16), then sent to the exposure module. If the lossy scheme is selected, a quantization factor (14) is used in compression that may be adjusted, depending upon feedback signals (18,20), to increase or decrease the compression.