Chroma Subsampling
Video and JPEG often store color at lower resolution than brightness, such as 4:2:0, because eyes notice detail less in color. Pushed hard it leaves blurry, bleeding color blocks behind crisp luminance.
Spot it
- 01Crisp luminance detail
- 02Blocky blurred color
- 03Colors spilling outside edges
Why it happens
The image is split into brightness and color-difference channels; the color channels are downsampled, often to half or quarter resolution, then enlarged and recombined.
Recreate it in Pixio
Image edit prompt“Apply extreme chroma subsampling to this image: the black and white detail stays sharp while the color layer becomes coarse, blocky and blurry, with colors bleeding past object edges and flat color blotches, like very low-bitrate video. Keep the original subject and composition.”
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