Photo compression (technically called zipping) lets you have your cake and eat it too. A Zip program takes your originals and will compress photos creating a “squished” copy. You can choose to compress pictures to their original resolution (best for printing) or a reduced resolution (great for viewing on the computer and emailing).

Unzipping is the process of decompressing a file that has been compressed or in other words, zipped. File compression sounds really technical, but all it really means is taking a normal file and squeezing it into something smaller. Then later when you want to use that file again, unzipping it returns the file to its normal size.

Zip technology is the most common and popular type of file compression used in computing today. Compressing a file is simply a process that takes any normal file and squeezes it into something smaller. And then when you want to use the file again, you “unzip” it back to its normal size.

Email has made sharing digital pictures with anyone on the planet a reality. But there is only one problem. While a 4 megapixel digital camera takes a great picture with awesome clarity and lots of vibrant color, each photo could reach a file size of 10 megabytes! That may not seem like much until you consider that the average email provider allows email attachments no larger than 3 megabytes. So does that mean you can only send 1/3 of a picture at a time?

Digital Compression (technically called zipping) is a technology that has been around for a while but until recently has been reserved mostly for business users. But with the invention of digital photos, it’s the perfect application to save photos and is great for the average user like me.

Gone are the days of fighting over duplicate prints and waiting an endless week for my memories to be developed. With my new digital camera, sharing photos is a snap. Now just a day after my sisters’ wedding, I’ve downloaded all my photos and am about to email pictures to my friends and family. And I’ve received several emails with all of their photos.