Color quantization by dynamic programming and principal analysis

Color quantization is a process of choosing a set of K representative colors to approximate the N colors of an image, K 2, of a color space in the principal direction of the input data. This new partitioning strategy leads to smaller quantization error and hence better image quality. Other algorithmic issues in color quantization such as efficient statistical computations and nearest-neighbor searching are also studied. The interplay between luminance and chromaticity in color quantization with and without color dithering is investigated. Our color quantization method allows the user to choose a balance between the image smoothness and hue accuracy for a given K .