Technology Hall · EXH-0020

What changes when an image file becomes smaller?

A smaller image file may look nearly the same from far away but reveal blocks near an edge.

What should you look for?

Where did detail change first?

Lossy methods reduce data by representing image information approximately, which can introduce visible artifacts at stronger compression.

Lossless compression finds more efficient representations without changing the decoded pixels, though size reduction may be smaller.

A built-in illustration is encoded in the browser as JPEG or PNG. File sizes vary by browser; no user file is uploaded.

Change compression mode and quality, drag the split, and inspect a magnified built-in sample.

Science source