Image Compression USA - Photography Terms & Glossary

Glossary Of Photography Terms [1]

Image Compression Image compression is a process used to reduce the file size of digital images while preserving visual quality to a certain extent. It involves algorithms and techniques that eliminate redundant or unnecessary data from the image file, thereby reducing its storage size. Compression can be lossless, where no image data is discarded, or lossy, where some image data is discarded to achieve higher compression ratios.

Lossless compression methods, such as ZIP or PNG, maintain all the original image data but may not achieve as high compression ratios as lossy methods. Lossy compression methods, such as JPEG, discard some image information that is considered less important or perceptually irrelevant to the human eye, resulting in smaller file sizes but potential loss of image detail and quality. Image compression is widely used in digital photography, web publishing, and multimedia applications to optimize file sizes for efficient storage, transmission, and display of images across various platforms and devices.