Kompressioonijäägid

Kompressioonijäägid, or compression residuals, refer to the inaccuracies or distortions that remain after data compression has been applied. When data is compressed, algorithms work to reduce its size by identifying and eliminating redundancy. However, some information may be lost or altered in this process, leading to these residuals.

There are two main types of compression: lossless and lossy. Lossless compression aims to perfectly reconstruct the original data, meaning there are no actual compression residuals in terms of data loss. The file size reduction is achieved by clever encoding. Lossy compression, on the other hand, deliberately discards information that is deemed less important to human perception, such as subtle color variations or high-frequency sounds. This leads to significant file size reduction but results in noticeable compression residuals when the data is decompressed.

The impact of compression residuals varies depending on the type of data and the compression method used. In images and audio, residuals might manifest as artifacts like blockiness, banding, or a general degradation of quality. For text or executable files, lossy compression is generally unacceptable due to the critical nature of data integrity. The goal of compression algorithms is to minimize perceptually significant residuals while achieving the desired level of data reduction.