Which compression discards information to reduce size and cannot recover the discarded data?

Which compression discards information to reduce size and cannot recover the discarded data?

• A. Image
• B. Lossy
• C. Metadata
• D. RGB

Answer: (B)

This is about a way to compress data that sacrifices some information to shrink the file size. Lossy compression does exactly that: it discards information during the compression process, and once discarded, it can’t be perfectly recovered. The idea is to remove details that are less noticeable to humans, like tiny color variations or fine texture in an image, so the file becomes much smaller. When you decompress, you get a close approximation of the original, but not an exact copy. This approach is common for images and audio where a small loss in quality is acceptable in exchange for much smaller files. If you need an exact copy of the original data, you’d use lossless compression, which preserves all information. The other terms aren’t about the compression method themselves—an image is the type of data being compressed, metadata is information about the data, and RGB is a color model used to represent colors in images.

This is about a way to compress data that sacrifices some information to shrink the file size. Lossy compression does exactly that: it discards information during the compression process, and once discarded, it can’t be perfectly recovered. The idea is to remove details that are less noticeable to humans, like tiny color variations or fine texture in an image, so the file becomes much smaller. When you decompress, you get a close approximation of the original, but not an exact copy. This approach is common for images and audio where a small loss in quality is acceptable in exchange for much smaller files. If you need an exact copy of the original data, you’d use lossless compression, which preserves all information. The other terms aren’t about the compression method themselves—an image is the type of data being compressed, metadata is information about the data, and RGB is a color model used to represent colors in images.