The JPEG Still Picture Compression Standard

Authors

Gregory K. Wallace

Year

1991

Journal Paper

Algorithm

JPEG

Source

Communications of the ACM

Identifiers

DOI 10.1145/103085.103089

Abstract¶

For the past few years, a joint ISO/CCITT committee known as JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) has been working to establish the first international compression standard for continuous-tone still images, both grayscale and color. JPEG's proposed standard aims to be generic, to support a wide variety of applications for continuous-tone images. To meet the differing needs of many applications, the JPEG standard includes two basic compression methods, each with various modes of operation. A DCT-based method is specified for "lossy" compression, and a predictive method for "lossless" compression. JPEG features a simple lossy technique known as the Baseline method, a subset of the other DCT-based modes of operation. The Baseline method has been by far the most widely implemented JPEG method to date, and is sufficient in its own right for a large number of applications. This article provides an overview of the JPEG standard, and focuses in detail on the Baseline method.

Summary¶

Wallace explains the still-image JPEG standard at the point when DCT-based baseline JPEG was becoming the common interchange format for photographic images. The paper is useful both as a historical standardization record and as a compact engineering description of the transform, quantization, entropy coding, progressive, lossless, and hierarchical pieces that shaped practical image compression.