Compression
can be translated as minimizing of digital information. There are
two major types of compression: Lossy and Non-Lossy compression.
Compression is most used in raster and meta images, not often
in vector images.
Lossy Compression
An
image processing software will remove information that it more
or less redundant to the human eye. The advantage with lossy compression
is that it gives a very high degree of compression. The compression
is often 5–30 times. The disadvantage is that the original
information will be lost. A format that uses lossy compressions
is JPEG.
JPEG - The compression
method used in the format with the same name.
Non-Lossy Compression
When
you use a non-lossy compression algorithm all original information
will be saved in the image. The disadvantage is that the
compression ratio is much lower. The compression for a grey scale
image
is often about 50% and for a black & white image much higher.
Formats that uses on non-lossy compressions are GIF and BMP.
LZW – Lempel-Ziv-Welch
RLE – Run
length Encoding
Packbits – Compress black & white TIFF images.
Group 3 – This compression method who compress black & white
TIFF images is based on the CCITT group 3 fax standard.
Group 4 – Same as Group 3 but improved compression
rate.