How does my digital camera compress my photos?

How does my digital camera compress my photos?

Mark Comon (Vice President, Paul's Photo, Torrance, CA) gives expert video advice on: What are the differences between photo formats? and more...

In your digital camera, when you take a picture, the file can be quite large and cumbersome. So, the digital cameras compress the file. What that means is that mathematically they eliminate some data, which it rebuilds again in the computer. That's image compression. The most popular way to do compression is with a JPEG file. It's a mathematical algorithm that preserves a great deal of the quality of your picture and makes a very popular file format for normal photographers to use.