Interleaved encoding of compressed attribute and color planes

An article of manufacture including a non-transitory computer-readable medium, having stored thereon program instructions that, upon execution by a printing device, cause the printing device to perform operations comprising:

• obtaining an a×b pixel macro-cell from an input image with one or more color planes, and an a×b attribute macro-cell, wherein the a×b pixel macro-cell contains 4 non-overlapping m×n pixel cells and the a×b attribute macro-cell contains 4 non-overlapping m×n attribute cells, wherein a×b pixels in the a×b pixel macro-cell are associated with respective color values, and wherein elements of the a×b attribute macro-cell are associated in a one-to-one fashion with respective pixels in the a×b pixel macro-cell;
• determining 4 attribute-plane output values associated respectively with the 4 non-overlapping m×n attribute cells;
• determining 1 to 4 color-plane output values for the non-overlapping m×n pixel cells;
• and
• writing an interleaved representation of the 4 attribute-plane output values and the determined color-plane output values to a computer-readable output medium, wherein the interleaved representation is a compressed representation of the a×b pixel macro-cell and the a×b attribute macro-cell.

A printing device comprising:

• at least one processor;
• memory;
• and
• program instructions, stored in the memory, that upon execution by the at least one processor cause the printing device to perform operations comprising:
• obtaining an a×b pixel macro-cell from an input image with one or more color planes, and an a×b attribute macro-cell, wherein the a×b pixel macro-cell contains 4 non-overlapping m×n pixel cells and the a×b attribute macro-cell contains 4 non-overlapping m×n attribute cells, wherein a×b pixels in the a×b pixel macro-cell are associated with respective color values, and wherein elements of the a×b attribute macro-cell are associated in a one-to-one fashion with respective pixels in the a×b pixel macro-cell;
• determining 4 attribute-plane output values associated respectively with the 4 non-overlapping m×n attribute cells;
• determining 1 to 4 color-plane output values for the non-overlapping m×n pixel cells;
• and
• writing an interleaved representation of the 4 attribute-plane output values and the determined color-plane output values to a computer-readable output medium, wherein the interleaved representation is a compressed representation of the a×b pixel macro-cell and the a×b attribute macro-cell.