Send comments on this topic. | Back to Introduction - All Topics | Help Version 16.5.9.25
Super Compressed Images

(Document/Medical only) Super compressed images are kept compressed in memory. Only 24-bit or 1-bit images can be kept super compressed. The memory requirements for super compressed images are greatly reduced compared to uncompressed images or RLE-compressed images. For more information on loading RLE compressed images, refer to Speeding up 1-bit Documents.

The data access for super compressed images is usually slower, compared to uncompressed images. The compression used for 24-bit images is lossy, which means multiple changes to the image can produce some visual loss.

The data access is usually slower for super compressed images, but there are situations in which the data access is faster than for uncompressed images. When dealing with very large images, the O/S might swap to disk the image data. In this case, the access for uncompressed images can be a lot slower than for super compressed images.

Any application that deals with large images of tens or hundreds of MB should consider using super compressed images.

The RasterImage.ChangeCompression method can be used to super compress 1-bit or 24-bit images, as well as, uncompress images and compress 1-bit images using RLE compression.