Software Architect's Handbook

Lossless compression

With lossless compression, all of the bytes from the original file can be recovered when the file is decompressed. This type of compression algorithm may be necessary if the file you are compressing cannot afford to lose any information.

For example, if you are compressing a text file of data, source code for a program, or an executable file, you cannot afford to lose any of the contents and would want to use a lossless compression algorithm. For image, video, and audio files, you may or may not require lossless compression, depending on your needs for file size and quality.

Graphics Interchange File (GIF) and Portable Network Graphics (PNG) are examples of image file formats that provide lossless compression. If animation ...