Image Compression Compression is one of the techniques used to make the file size of an image smaller. By applying compression to the file, the file shrinks to a fraction of its original size. You can now fit more images onto a floppy disk or hard disk because they have been compressed and take up less space. More importantly, the smaller file size also means that the file can be sent over the World Wide Web much faster. There are two different types of compression: Lossless Lossy A compression scheme in which no bits of information are permanently lost. A compression scheme in which some bits of information are permanently lost during compression and decompression of an image. The most common image format on the WWW that uses a lossless compression scheme is the GIF format. The loss is usually only minimal and hardly detectable. The most common image format on the WWW that uses a lossy compression scheme is the JPEG format. When converting an image to GIF format, you have the option to have the image display any number of colors up to 256. JPEG is a very efficient, true-color, compressed image format. Although it is lossy, it has the capability of showing you more colors than GIF (more than 256 colors). For most types of data, lossless compression techniques can reduce the space needed by only about 50%. JPEG has the ability to achieve much greater compression. It can reduce files sizes to about 5% of their normal size