METHOD OF REDUCING BLOCK ARTIFACTS CREATED BY BLOCK TRANSFORM COMPRESSION ALGORITHMS

A method of improving image quality when using block transform image compression algorithms by applying a variable lowpass filter (blur) operation on block boundaries that is based on the coefficients of the transformed data. The method of reducing block artifacts results from adaptively blurring the block boundaries based on the frequency content of the blocks. Low frequency blocks are heavily blurred, while high frequency blocks should have very little blur.