An example embodiment may involve obtaining an a×b pixel macro-cell from an image with one or more color planes, and an a×b attribute macro-cell. The a×b pixel macro-cell may contain 4 non-overlapping m×n pixel cells, and the a×b attribute macro-cell may contain 4 non-overlapping m×n attribute cells. The pixels in the a×b pixel macro-cell may be associated with respective color values. The example embodiment may also involve determining 4 attribute output values associated respectively with the 4 non-overlapping m×n attribute cells. The example embodiment may further involve determining 1 to 4 color-plane output values for the non-overlapping m×n pixel cells, and writing an interleaved representation of the 4 attribute output values and the determined color-plane output values.