JPEG-LS

Overview
JPEG-LS is an image compression scheme and file format. It supports both lossy and lossless compression. The lossy compression is often called "near-lossless", because the encoder can set a limit on the maximum error. The compression algorithm is based on LOCO-I, developed by HP Labs.

Disambiguation
The file format is similar in structure to JPEG interchange format, and it was developed by the same organization that developed JPEG. Beyond that, JPEG-LS is not closely related to JPEG.

The term lossless JPEG is best reserved for the lossless compression mode defined the JPEG standard, but it is sometimes (accidentally?) used to mean JPEG-LS, or lossless JPEG-LS, or all lossless formats whose names contain "JPEG".

Specifications

 * ITU-T Recommendation T.87

Software

 * CharLS - A C++ JPEG-LS library. Includes sample files.