[crazygringo]

This is very, very cool. It would also be amazing as a Photoshop filter.

But separately -- I've often wondered if the pixel grid is really the best way of storing compressed image data, and if something based on triangles couldn't be viable.

Just like progressive JPEG can render broad areas of color followed by filling in details, what if you used progressive layers of semitransparent colored triangle meshes to do the same? Or at least to form a base layer?

HEVC image encoding is already a big improvement over JPEG in that fixed square blocks are replaced by variable-sized blocks. But if we got rid of rectangular blocks and replaced them with flexible triangles?

It might be computationally prohibitive for encoding, and also you'd need to find a really clever way of representing triangles and colors in a minimal number of bits. But curious if anyone here knows whether something like that's ever been attempted.

[nitrogen]

I remember seeing an experimental compression algorithm that made everything look like a painting, but I'm not sure how to find it again. It seems likely there have been other attempts at compression through vectorization.