The coding, storage, and reconstruction of images is a major concern in the application of computer technology to technical and scientific problems. One example is the flood of geophysical and intelligence data originating from satellite platforms. In such applications it is highly desirable to reduce the storage and transmission requirements for image data. An image can be coded compactly when it is possible to exploit self similar redundancy in the image. The development of such a so-called fractal method for compressing image data has been the focus of our research project. Fractal compression is a promising approach to image compression. Within a very short development time, fractal techniques have yielded results which rival the best examples of data compression afforded by other methods. Although fractal encoding of images is complex and may require specialized hardware for real time applications, the decoding process can be widely utilized because it is simple, fast, and suitable for software implementation. Thus, it can be run on workstations or personal computers without special requirements.