Compress and Uncompress Images

A few years ago, I presented a way of compressing images with the Red zlib proposed by Bruno Anselme (https://redlcv.blogspot.com/2018/01/image-compression-with-red.html). Since then, Red and Oldes's Rebol 3 have implemented different compression methods that are faster and simpler to use. 

Both languages feature a compress function. Input data can be string or binary values, which is useful for RGB images. Returned values are binary. Both languages use lossless compression methods. 

Red and R3 share the following methods: 

deflate: A lossless data compression format that combines the LZ77 algorithm with Huffman coding.

zlib: Implements the deflate compression algorithm and can create files in gzip format. This library is widely used, due to its small size, efficiency and flexibility.

gzip: gzip is based on the deflate algorithm.

R3 adds a few more algorithms: 

br: Compression Brotli. A fast alternative to GZIP compression proposed by Google.

crush: A lossless compression package developed by the NASA.

lzma: Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain algorithm, is a lossless data compression algorithm.

As these methods are variations on deflate compression, the compression ratio doesn't vary much from one method to another. The difference is in the speed of compression.

 

Of course, both languages have a decompress function. Input data is binary, and the method used must be the same as that chosen for compression.   

Here's a minimalist example of code for Red and R3.  

method: 'zlib ;--a word

img: load %../pictures/in.png         ;--use your own image

bin: img/rgb ;--image as RGB binary

print ["Method    :" form method]

print ["Image size:" img/size]

print ["Before compression:" nU: length? bin]

t: dt [cImg: compress bin method]         ;--R3/Red compress

print ["After  compression:" nC: length? cImg]

ratio: round/to 1.0 - (nC / nU) * 100 0.01                 ;--compression ratio

print ["Compression :" form ratio "%"]

print ["Compress    :" third t * 1000  "ms"]                 ;--in msec

t: dt [uImg: decompress cImg method]         ;--R3/Red decompress

print ["Decompress  :" third t * 1000  "ms"]                 ;--in msec

print ["After decompression:" length? uImg]

The result:

Method    : zlib

Image size: 1920x1280

Before compression: 7372800

After  compression: 4011092

Compression : 45.6 %

Compress    : 46.298 ms

Decompress  : 26.706 ms

After decompression: 7372800

Fast and efficient!