Lossless

Compression that throws nothing away, so the file is exact but large. What you keep for the master, not the delivery.

Lossless compression is packing without discarding: cleverer arrangement, identical contents, every pixel recoverable bit for bit. The price is weight, files that remain stubbornly large, because reality, especially the noisy, grainy kind, resists tidy summary.

For the master, not the delivery is the entire policy: archives, gold masters and anything that will be edited again deserve lossless, because every lossy generation compounds. What travels to audiences is another matter; there, calculated loss is the honest trade. The sin is confusing the two, archiving the compressed and shipping the master.