An apparatus and method for enhanced encoding of RGB images is presented. The use of intra-plane prediction, which relies on correlation between neighboring pixels of the same color, is enhanced by adding inter-plane prediction that relies on correlation between neighboring pixels of different colors. Inter-plane prediction is performed on at least one of the colors, and more preferably two of the colors, such as R and B, based on input from G. In at least one embodiment, multiple encoding modes are provided, in which different colors from the RGB image are differently coded with either pulse code modulation (PCM), or differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) at a given quantization level (qn). The quantization level and selection of mode being determined for optimizing coding (e.g., based on bit coverage).
Intra-plane and inter-plane predictive method for RGB image coding