Hi, jseger, Raindog, and Jeffrey —
js, please accept a warm welcome to Apple Discussions!
Mac OS X offers .zip and .dmg options for compression and archiving through its graphical user interface. The compression is most noticeable when archiving large files and folders.
UNIX offers additional options for archiving and compression — e.g.,
gzip and
zip (~
tar +
compress) that can be accessed through the Terminal application.
As
this brief tutorial from OSXFAQ.com illustrates, the UNIX commands allow control of the degree of compression (which impacts the speed of the process).
Like Raindog has pointed out, there are various utilities (including StuffIt) available that provide interface and options for archiving. Here are results from
versiontracker and
MacUpdate searches for compression utilities that should give you a good idea of the "3rd-party" options available.
I'm not familiar enough to summarize the degree of compression that can be achieved using various choices, which seems to be your main concern — but other participants may be able to help there...
I hope this is helpful!
Regards,
Dean
p.s. As I think Jeffrey's implying, some compression methods (e.g., JPEG) are "lossy" in that algorithms are used to save only a portion of the original data while minimizing the noticeable impact to quality, although data is lost.
I edited this message...
