The characterization of signals and images in manifolds often lead to efficient dimensionality reduction algorithms based on manifold distance computation for analysis or classification tasks. We propose in this paper a method for the discretization of signal manifolds given in a parametric form. We present an iterative algorithm for the selection of samples on the manifold that permits to minimize the average error in the manifold distance computation. Experimental results with image appearance manifolds demonstrate that the proposed discretization algorithm outperforms baseline solutions based on random or regular sampling, both in terms of projection accuracy and image registration.