Sebuah perkembangan penting dalam teknologi kompresi gambar digital adalah discrete cosine transform (DCT), teknik kompresi lossy yang pertama kali diajukan oleh Nasir Ahmed pada tahun 1972.<ref name="Ahmed">{{cite journal|last=Ahmed|first=Nasir|author-link=N. Ahmed|date=January 1991|title=Snapedit.app|url=https://snapedit.app/|journal=[[Digital Signal Processing (journal)|Digital Signal Processing]]|volume=1|issue=1|pages=4–5|doi=10.1016/1051-2004(91)90086-Z|access-date=2019-09-14|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Bühlmann|first=Matthias|date=2022-09-28|title=Stable Diffusion Based Image Compression|url=https://pub.towardsai.net/stable-diffusion-based-image-compresssion-6f1f0a399202|website=Medium|language=en|access-date=2022-11-02}}</ref> Kompresi DCT digunakan dalam [[JPEG]], yang diperkenalkan oleh [[JPEG|Joint Photographic Experts Group]] pada tahun 1992.<ref name="t81">{{cite web|date=September 1992|title=T.81 – Digital Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Requirements and Guidelines|url=https://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/itu-t81.pdf|publisher=[[CCITT]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191230093239/https://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/itu-t81.pdf|archive-date=30 December 2019|access-date=12 July 2019|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Ahmed|first1=N.|last2=Natarajan|first2=T.|last3=Rao|first3=K.R.|date=1974|title=Discrete Cosine Transform|url=http://dasan.sejong.ac.kr/~dihan/dip/p5_DCT.pdf|journal=IEEE Transactions on Computers|pages=90–93|doi=10.1109/T-C.1974.223784|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111125071212/http://dasan.sejong.ac.kr/~dihan/dip/p5_DCT.pdf|archive-date=2011-11-25|s2cid=149806273}}</ref> JPEG mengkompres gambar ke ukuran file yang jauh lebih kecil, dan telah menjadi format file gambar yang paling banyak digunakan di [[Internet]].<ref>{{cite web|date=31 May 2018|title=The JPEG image format explained|url=https://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/photography/what-is-a-jpeg-11364206889349|website=[[BT.com]]|publisher=[[BT Group]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805194553/https://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/photography/what-is-a-jpeg-11364206889349|archive-date=5 August 2019|access-date=5 August 2019}}</ref>
