> Only concern I have is the excessive blurring of low detail areas?
Couldn't the person who picks the compression ratio tell the encoder which part of the image is important? And even have it done automatically to some extent. If you are going to send a 5MB picture from a person at their birthday party, if feels worth it to spend a few more bits on that person than its surroundings.
Extrapolating to smartphone pictures where you generally select a focus area (and sometimes selectively blur the rest), they could use that information to keep more bits of information in this area.
Couldn't the person who picks the compression ratio tell the encoder which part of the image is important? And even have it done automatically to some extent. If you are going to send a 5MB picture from a person at their birthday party, if feels worth it to spend a few more bits on that person than its surroundings.
Extrapolating to smartphone pictures where you generally select a focus area (and sometimes selectively blur the rest), they could use that information to keep more bits of information in this area.