Compression artifacts

Compression artifacts are visual distortions or anomalies that appear in images or videos after the data has been compressed to reduce file size. When compression reduces the amount of detail, it can cause issues like blurriness, blocky areas, or strange color smudges. These artifacts happen because the compression process simplifies or removes some information to make the file smaller, which can sometimes lead to a loss of image quality, especially at higher compression levels. Essentially, they are the imperfections that result from trying to balance quality with smaller file sizes.