Week 6: Clear/ Lossy vs. Lossless

Many files need to be compressed to store or send to another computer. There are so many ways to compress a file. Two in particular are lossy and lossless. Lossy compression is used for multimedia data, such as audio, video or still images. This type of compression is a data encoding method which discards some of the data. As viewers, we do not notice the difference. The second type of compression is lossless. Lossless compression allows the original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data to eliminate redundancy in the image. This type of compression is important for archiving and editing files. Lossless compression is used for text documents or source codes.

The diagram above shows how lossy and lossless compression, compress the files and then restore them. Lossless restores the original files, whereas lossy discards some of the data while it is being compressed and restores the data that has not been lost. 

Lossy and lossless compression are important to the business world. Having different types of compressions allows businesses to have more options and meet the needs of different tasks. These types of compressions work for different businesses as well.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/file-compression3.htm  
The link above will explain lossy and lossless compression. It will also explain the pros and cons of each and what each compression is used for.