Abstract: A method is disclosed for operating a computer system to reduce the size of an image, which comprises the following steps. First, data representing an image, a size of the image, and a desired size of a corresponding compressed image is received by the system. If processing of the image is finished, then data representing the compressed image is emitted, otherwise the image is partitioned into at least one strip to omit and a plurality of subimages, each represented by data representing the subimage, a size of the subimage, and a desired size for a corresponding compressed subimage. Then the above steps are repeated for each subimage.