Google might be trying to take the file format world by storm with WebP, but an Israeli tech company, ICVT, would much rather that we took a look at their innovative JPEG-compressing technology, JPEGmini. It takes JPEG files and makes them smaller, without any perceptible loss of quality. As they put it, it’s your photos on a diet. JPEGmini uses baseline JPEG technology, so provided that your device supports JPEG, it’ll support JPEGmini, too.

There’s a maximum of 80% compression achieveable, but in order to manage that, you have to be working with a file that’s resolution in excess of eight megapixels. The smaller the file, the less compression is achievable.

JPEGmini works by assessing the photo to determine just how much compression it can get away with before the image quality becomes noticeably poorer. Then a unique JPEG encoder works its magic and creates the most compact version of the image that’s possible under current JPEG standards.

For the developers – Sharon Carmel and Dror Gill – the idea is to save storage space, to speed up email transfers of photos, and to save money by reducing the time it takes to move data from one place to another. You know, it’d be even more effective and efficient if it weren’t a web-based application and could be downloaded as a desktop app. Cos at the moment we’re all uploading and downloading photos in order to compress them, and when you’re on a slow connection, well it’s like pulling teeth. But the idea, that’s very cool.

You can go have a play and squash some pictures over at JPEGmini, for free. Let me know what you think.

(Headsup to TechCrunch)