MIT
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Mechanical Engineering
6.050J/2.110J – Information, Entropy and Computation – Spring 2014

JPEG Demonstration

The JPEG demonstration on this page shows the tradeoff between file size and image quality for JPEG compression.
These images are scaled to fit on this page. Click on any image to view or download it at full size.

  Original Excellent
Quality
Good
Quality
Fair
Quality
Poor
Quality
  original excellent good fair poor
Format TIFF JPEG JPEG JPEG JPEG
Compressed? no yes yes yes yes
Image width 1200 pixels 1200 pixels 1200 pixels 1200 pixels 1200 pixels
Image height 1400 pixels 1400 pixels 1400 pixels 1400 pixels 1400 pixels
File size 5,044,532 bytes 1,128,080 bytes 103,690 bytes 52,437 bytes 37,664 bytes
Compression
ratio
  4.47 48.65 96.20 133.94
Quality scale   100% 67% 20% 5%
Display width
on this page
99 pixels 99 pixels 99 pixels 99 pixels 99 pixels
Display height
on this page
116 pixels 116 pixels 116 pixels 116 pixels 116 pixels

Note that even with compression ratios as large as 100 the image quality is quite acceptable for many purposes. Most quality differences can only be seen from the full-size compressed images (for example, look at the rendering of the hair, especially the wisp near the left ear). There are slight color variations that were not caused by the compression.

Compression was performed in GraphicConverter, version 8.7.1.  Files were saved without metadata. Image quality was set using a sliding quality scale with default settings for most options.









The image used in this demonstration was cropped from a photograph taken at a live concert of The Spectrum Singers, a few minutes after the photograph below.

The Spectrum Singers

The Spectrum Singers in concert, Cambridge, MA, May 18, 2013.


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