LZW compression refers to a data compression tool named after its three developers namely A. Lempel, J. Ziv, and Terry Welch.  LZW compression is commonly used for general purposes because of its ease of use and versatile functions.  Compression techniques or tools like LZW may be used when users want to decrease the size of their files to as much as 50% lower than the original file size.  LZW compression is commonly used to compress GIF files or files saved under the Graphic Interchange Format which are sourced from the web.  Many people also use LZW compression when handling TIFF files that come from image processing software such as Adobe Photoshop.

The algorithm involved in LZW compression specifies the creation of tables or codebooks in which each input data is encoded.  All input data will retain its original length and corresponding bits and will be given a shorter code in the table.  The compression process basically allows data to be substituted using the shorter codes allocated for each input data.  In this way, files may be compressed to make them smaller.  Whether the data or file involved contains text information or images from the Web or other image processing software, LZQ compression can reduce its size significantly.

Compression tool and techniques like LZW is very useful for a lot of users as it helps in terms of file transfer rates.  When users for example try to send various files over the internet through email services, it may take a very long time for the recipients to get these files because of the very large file size.  If these same files were compressed with the LZW tool for instance, the file transfer via email will be faster.  Reduced file sizes secondary to compression also results to faster downloading of files from websites.  For users with limited computer storage, LZW file compression may be the only way to manage existing hardware storage resources.