If you're still thinking in pixels, then you're already behind JPEG. There are other ways to compress visual data, such as in the form of its frequency spectrum, or with vector embeddings

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Or in a tensor field consisting of billions of weighted parameters across several matrices which then get multiplied along specific embedded vectors, apparently...

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

To explain a bit more, most of the information in an image is actually stuff we would never notice. The very specific way a few of a pixels slightly deviate from a perfect gradient, for example.

The basic idea of a jpeg is to convert an image to a kind of frequency space, where each pixel corresponds to a specific wave-like pattern. It's reversable, preserving the information. and fast conversion to do, thanks to FFT. Even without, it would only be quadratic time. Then, the algorithm crops it in that new space. (IIRC jpeg actually has a few extra features, as well)