Embodiments provide a method comprising receiving a continuous tone (contone) image, wherein each pixel of a plurality of pixels of the contone image comprises pixel data associated with a plurality of color planes; forming a pixel group that includes a target pixel and one or more pixels that are neighboring to the target pixel; for each pixel in the pixel group and for each of one or more color planes of the plurality of color planes, comparing pixel data of the corresponding pixel for the corresponding color plane with one or more threshold levels to generate threshold pixel data; generating one or more color plane pixel windows for the pixel group corresponding to the one or more color planes; and generating a pixel window for the pixel group.