Compact high addressability rendering

A printing system, comprising:

• a digital front end adapted to receive an image file and generate multi-bit Image data;
• said digital front end operative to generate multi-bit image data having both multi-level halftone regions and antialiased pixels;
• a tagging processor to generate a rendering tag for a target pixel within said multi-bit image data, said rendering tag identifying a fill-order based upon a difference between a value of said target pixel and a value of a neighboring pixel;
• and
• a rendering processor responsive to said rendering tag to convert said target pixel to a high addressability pixel;
• and
• a marking engine, coupled to said compact rendering module, for generating an image in response to said high addressability pixels.

A method of processing image data, comprising:

• receiving multi-bit image data, the multi-bit image data including a target pixel and a neighboring pixel;
• determining a difference between a value of the target pixel and a value of at least one neighboring pixel;
• and
• identifying a fill-order for the target pixel using a result of the determining step.