A plurality of source image pixels of a subset of image pixels of a source image cell of a selected color component of a digitized image are processed to generate a corresponding color component for each corresponding processed image pixel of a corresponding processed image cell, wherein the processed image pixels of the processed image cell are in one-to-one correspondence with the source image pixels of the source image cell, a bit length of the color component of each processed image pixel of the processed image cell exceeds a bit length of color component of each source image pixel the source image cell, the processed image cell contains substantial color information in excess of what could be contained within a bit length equal to the bit length of each the source image pixel of the color component of the source image cell.