Embodiments herein provide for a pre-processing stage or mechanism for enhancing data compression of an image by splitting or separating the color channels for pixels into planar data sources. Typically, image data is displayed as an interleaved set of channel types for a color space such that each pixel within an image (such as a bitmap) has one component for each color channel. By separating the interleaved bitmap into a planar representation, each plane can be compressed independently and often times achieve higher compression ratios. This is especially true for channels that are expected to stay fairly constant throughout the bitmap most of the time. The utilization of the above embodiment can be further enhanced through manipulation of channel data or through converting the color space from one form to another.