Comparison between IFS Fractal Compression and JPEG compression

These images present result of a comparison between JPEG compression and IFS fractal compression on pictures of natural scenes.

The JPEG system used was Xing; IFS fractal compression has been done using IFS Inc. board (courtesy of: VTR, Milano, Italy).

Compression 1:13 and 1:39 both Fractal IFS and JPEG

Error image of above compressions

Compression 1:89 and 1:149 both Fractal IFS and JPEG

Error image of above compressions

ifs_comp, another fractal compression program

The program is based on a quadtree decomposition of an image and in a search for similar rectangles, differing by a chosen threshold of RMS error.
The method is inspired by Yuval Fisher works. The sample code works on SGI format images, but considers only 8 bits (grey scale); to generalise to colour is a straightforword exercise left to the reader ;-).
A simple menu allows to select some parameters.
The program compresses an image creating a .map file containing the IFS coefficients. You can decompress the image specifying the .map file; you can see the absolute difference between decompressed and original image (the reconstructed image is saved with the name rigen.sgi).

To down_load the source (written for Silicon Graphics machines IRIX 4.x) simply click here.

Other info on fractals.

Other info on fractal image compression.