The disclosed embodiments illustrate methods and systems for encoding an image. The method includes identifying one or more objects, having an associated first tag value, in the image. The first tag value is deterministic of at least a type of the one or more objects. The number of the one or more objects in the image is less than a predetermined number of objects. The method further includes assigning a second tag value to each pixel in the image to create an encoded image. The second tag value is assigned based on the type of object represented by each pixel. The size of the second tag value is less than the size of the first tag value. The method further includes defining a header field for the encoded image. The header field includes the first tag value associated with each of the one or more objects.