Subsampling

Subsampling exploits the fact that humans are more sensitive to luminance than chrominance (color). The JPEG algorithm (amongst others) uses subsampling to throw away color information. Although color information is lost, it is difficult for humans to perceive the difference between the original image and an image with subsampled color. Of course this is dependent on the level of subsampling. Commonly used image subsampling values are / 2, / 4, / 8. Subsampling is used in all modern video codecs.