1. In a device for operating upon a block-based digital image that exhibits an initial resolution, the block-based digital image defining at least a first block of a first dimension, an improvement of apparatus for selectively reducing the initial resolution exhibited by the block-based digital image to a first-reduced resolution, said apparatus comprising: a prescaler coupled to receive indications of each block that together define the block-based digital image, said prescaler for scaling the indications of each block of the block-based digital image to form a first scaled variant representation of each block of the block-based digital image; a combiner coupled to receive the scaled variant representation of each block of the block-based digital image, said combiner for combining the scaled variant representation of each block together to form a combined representation of the scaled variant representation of each block of the block-based digital image; and a reducer coupled to receive the combined representation formed by said combiner, said reducer for reducing the combined representation in resolution to a reduced-resolution representation of the combined representation of the first-reduced resolution.