Nora's Blog

Thursday, January 19, 2023

JPEG: what it is and how the compressed image format works

he world of photo formats is vast and full of terrors, but don't worry: we at FotoNerd are here ready to explain how they work. Whether it's photographs, images on the Internet or graphic work, it is impossible that you have never heard this word:

JPEG. Experienced photographers know what we're talking about, while novice photographers may have a hard time understanding what these four letters mean. So let's find out in this guide what a JPEG is specifically, how it works, when it is better to use it and why it has become the most used image compression format in the world.

JPEG: what it is and how it works

Advertising

JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Expert Group, an ISO/CCITT expert organization that outlined the first international standard for continuous-tone digital image compression, both grayscale and color. A curiosity that many do not know, is that JPEG is simply the method by which the file is compressed, while the actual format is called JFIF (Jpeg File Interchange Format), but usually the first acronym is used to define the type of format and therefore it has entered the common vocabulary to call it this way to facilitate identification.

 

JPEG compression algorithm

JPEG Compressor  algorithm used to compress JPEG files is called lossy data compression, which indicates, in the field of computer science, the identification of a group of data compression algorithms that lead to the loss of some parts of the original information in favor of size. This process creates a file that is lower in quality than the original, but similar enough not to result in the loss of essential information that would compromise its quality. The development algorithm, in fact, works by compressing the image by eliminating only superfluous and irrelevant information, without touching the essential ones. Once the file has been compressed with this method, it will no longer be possible to recover the initial information except from the original file, and it is a good idea not to make further compression processes, because they would further modify a file already processed, compromising its quality and making it, in some cases, completely unusable.

Comments