<algorithm> A technique for encoding images using fractals. {Yuval Fisher's fractal image compression site (http://inls.ucsd.edu/y/Fractals/)}. [Summary?] (1998-03-27)

Fractal compression is a lossy compression method for digital images, based on fractals. The method is best suited for textures and natural images, relying on the fact that parts of an image often resemble other parts of the same image.

In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set.

<mathematics, graphics> A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a smaller copy of the whole. Fractals are generally self-similar (bits look like the whole) and independent of scale (they look similar, no matter how close you zoom in). Many mathematical structures are fractals; e.g. {Sierpinski triangle}, Koch snowflake, Peano curve, Mandelbrot set and Lorenz attractor. Fractals also describe many real-world objects that do not have simple geometric shapes, such as clouds, mountains, turbulence, and coastlines. Benoit Mandelbrot, the discoverer of the Mandelbrot set, coined the term "fractal" in 1975 from the Latin fractus or "to break". He defines a fractal as a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovich dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension. However, he is not satisfied with this definition as it excludes sets one would consider fractals. {sci.fractals FAQ (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/usenet-by-group/sci.fractals/)}. See also fractal compression, fractal dimension, {Iterated Function System}. Usenet newsgroups: news:sci.fractals, news:alt.binaries.pictures.fractals, news:comp.graphics. ["The Fractal Geometry of Nature", Benoit Mandelbrot]. [Are there non-self-similar fractals?] (1997-07-02)

(fractals)

Fractal-generating software is any type of graphics software that generates images of fractals. There are many fractal generating programs available, both free and commercial.

<algorithm> A term describing a data compression algorithm which actually reduces the amount of information in the data, rather than just the number of bits used to represent that information. The lost information is usually removed because it is subjectively less important to the quality of the data (usually an image or sound) or because it can be recovered reasonably by interpolation from the remaining data. MPEG and JPEG are examples of lossy compression techniques. Opposite: lossless. (1995-03-29)

A compression artifact (or artefact) is a noticeable distortion of media (including images, audio, and video) caused by the application of lossy compression. Lossy data compression involves discarding some of the media's data so that it becomes small enough to be stored within the desired disk space or transmitted (streamed) within the available bandwidth (known as the data rate or bit rate).

Virtual memory compression (also referred to as RAM compression and memory compression) is a memory management technique that utilizes data compression to reduce the size or number of paging requests to and from the auxiliary storage. In a virtual memory compression system, pages to be paged out of virtual memory are compressed and stored in physical memory, which is usually random-access memory (RAM), or sent as compressed to auxiliary storage such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD).