Reading 5 - Sarah Proctor

In Cory Arcangel's article, On Compression, he explains the finer points of what really happens when a file, such as an image, sound file, or video file gets compressed.

The original file, which is clean, clear and sharp, is often times to big to move around quickly and cheaply, meaning that you either wait 12 years on a full fledged picture to upload, or you send it to the recipient via snail mail. Instead, computer scientists have created a way to compress these images and make them both smaller in data, while still being pretty much recognizable to the viewer.

There are two major types of compression, Lossless and Lossy. Lossless makes the data file of an image seem smaller, while not actually removing any information.

When a file is compressed in a Lossy format, you lose some information that you can never get back, altering the picture forever. Once a picture is compressed Lossy, you can never get the uncompressed file back, you can only further compress it.

While the cat on the right is still recognizable, it has become visibly blurred. The right hand cat will upload faster and smoother then the left hand cat, but it doesn't look as good.

It is really all a matter of preference as to which type of compression you use, but either way, you can still get fast and free photos like we have never been able to before.