Exporting a map or chart to a JPEG 2000 file

The .jp2 format reduces a file size of extremely large images. It uses wavelet compression that produces highly compressed files, while retaining better image quality.

Lossless compression reduces the file size by reducing data redundancies. With lossless compression, the original data is restored when a file is decompressed. With lossy compression, some data is discarded to reduce the file size, which means that the original data cannot be recovered when the file is decompressed.

The Quality measure is used to control the balance between the quality of the image and the reduction in the file size. The higher the Quality value, the less data is discarded. Lossy compression with a Quality value of 100 is virtually the same as choosing lossless compression. You must decide a balance between file size and image quality, which usually falls between 0 and 20. Values over 20 produce an increased file size with little visible improvement in image quality.