Systems, methods and computer-readable storage media are disclosed for accelerating bitmap remoting by extracting non-grid tiles from source bitmaps. A server takes a source image, identifies possibly repetitive features, and tiles the image. For each tile that contains part of a possibly repetitive feature, the server replaces that part with the dominant color of the tile. The system then sends to a client a combination of new tiles and features, and indications to tiles and features that the client has previously received and stored, along with an indication of how to recreate the image based on the tiles and features.