What is Data Compression?

It is a technique to compress the data in order to reduce its size and ultimately save some space and that can be helpful for transporting data from one place to the other.There are usually two types of data compression:

• Lossless Data Compression, and

• Lossy Data Compression

In lossless data compression, the retrieved data after compression will have no loss of information from that particular data and normally used in document processing as it is not desirable to get any modification in the document due to compression. Whereas, in lossy compression, the retrieved data after compression will have some loss in it and it is normally used in the applications like audio-video processing and music because it won’t affect more when it comes to music even if there is a minor loss in the retrieved data.

Let’s talk more about lossless data compression.

Let’s take an example, an equation needs to be computed i.e., 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2. Now, the same equation can be written as 2^10. That is the concept behind the data compression. The same can be applicable to the binary sequences that are used in computer systems. So, it is called lossless data compression, desired result and space saving at the same time. Taking from calculations to an image, can be represented digitally (binary) and so can be compressed.

Talking about lossy data compression, it is usually applied in audio, video and image processing.

Let’s take an example of an image of an apple kept on a yellow color table. So there will be a red as a foreground color and yellow as a background color. So, basically there will be two colors. A logic that can be applied will be to omit more of the background color and some of the foreground color. By doing so, there will be no change in the image that one can recognize. However, if noticed carefully, one will find red color a bit darker than original one due to the insertion of “null” pixels (usually black (pixel value ‘0’)) as some information (pixels) are omitted. In audio and video, one can reduce the bit rates in order to achieve some compression and save space.

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