A full-color desk top publishing (DTP) system is disclosed that includes a general purpose computer system, a full-color high resolution graphics system and peripheral devices such as a color laser copier including a scanner and a printer, a workscreen display and user inputs such as a digitizer and a keyboard. The DTP system can generate graphics images in bands across a page image with the images being stored in DRAM as compressed images using ADCT compression and the JPEG standard. Numerous image processing and creation steps are also disclosed.