Compressing Images

Image compression can be a little confusing, especially because many people believe that all images are JPEG files. This stems from the fact that point-and-shoot cameras as well as most mobile phones all take pictures that are saved as JPEG files. While it is true that many pictures on the Web are served as JPEG files, there are benefits and drawbacks to using different types of image files to get the compression you want. Since we’ve already started talking about JPEG files, let’s start there and then move on to some other image types.

Using JPEG Image Compression

JPEG comes from the Joint Photographic Experts Group who created this particular type of image compression. It is generally used as a lossy form of image compression, so what goes in does not always come out. The idea behind using JPEG compression is finding a balance between file size and image distortion or pixelation. Depending on the program you use to save the image, you have several options for compression. Some save images on a quality scale that ranges from 0 to 100, while others use another scale that goes from 0 to 12, and as you can probably guess, the lower the quality, the smaller the file. JPEG files also contain a large color palette, supporting up to 16.7 million colors.