1. An apparatus for image encoding, comprising: a computer configured for receiving image data as received image data; memory coupled to said computer; and programming executable on said computer for performing steps comprising: executing a transform on the received image data; partitioning the energy of an image input into directional subbands of horizontal and vertical component energy in response to the diamond shape frequency response of the input; wherein said directional subbands comprise four directional subbands, which are combinations of horizontal and vertical energy, as regions Low-Low (LL), Low-High (LH), High-Low (HL) and High-High (HH); and applying a Quincunx filter bank, having a combination of fan filters and shifter filters for three of said four directional subbands, in which frequency is partitioned in horizontal and vertical directions with sub-divided outputs in regions Low-High (LH), High-Low (HL) and High-High (HH); said Quincunx filter having six channel filter banks Low-High 1 (LH 1 ), Low-Hiqh 2 (LH 2 ), High-Low 1 (HL 1 ), Hiqh-Low 2 (HL 2 ), High-High 1 (HH 1 ), and High-High 2 (HH 2 ) utilized in said transform, with a Low-Low (LL) subband iteratively processed through the six channel filter banks.