Hi Chris,

If you talk about "effet" I assuming your are under FMX application. Am I right ?

Your idea is good, but not faisable as is :

1) Effet are RunTime only : Due to the TEffect architecture it's unfortunally difficult to get the result as a TBitmap : I do not know why they do not introduce an event on Effect level, other subject !).

2) You can, as suggested, translate the c code to apply a monochrome effet, but that will not reduce, as is, the size of your bitmap : You'll have to reduce the Pixel format setting.

3) As I see, the goal is to save the image in a "compressed" form in your database : Your code is correct, but you save a BITMAP image, which is very big. The biggest state in fact

For reduce the size, why not saving it in, for example, JPG format ?

Put an image on a form, a button, and a Memo, and put this code in the on click : It is a exemple of Image Format manipulation in FMX.

procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
var l : TBitmapCodecManager;
s : TBitmapSurface;
lm : TMemoryStream;
begin
l := TBitmapCodecManager.Create;
lm := TMemoryStream.Create;
s := TBitmapSurface.Create;
try
s.Assign(Image1.Bitmap);

lm.Clear;
l.SaveToStream(lm,s,'bmp');
Memo1.Lines.Add(Format('BMP Image bitmap size : %d bytes',[lm.size]));

lm.Clear;
l.SaveToStream(lm,s,'jpg');
Memo1.Lines.Add(Format('JPG Image bitmap size : %d bytes',[lm.size]));

lm.Clear;
l.SaveToStream(lm,s,'png');
Memo1.Lines.Add(Format('PNG Image bitmap size : %d bytes',[lm.size]));
finally
FreeAndNil(l);
FreeAndNil(lm);
FreeAndNil(s);
end;
end;