Raster data is comprised of grid cells. Unlike its vector counterpart that is comprised of vertices and paths.
Accuracy depends on cell size. Cell size must be small enough to capture the required detail. And as resolution increases, the size of the cell decreases. But this comes at a cost for speed of processing and data storage.
Raster storage in its raw state is inefficient because it is normally stores values row-by-row from the top left corner.
Have no fear:
The way to improve raster size efficiency is through image compression. And there are several ways to use GIS compression to reduce file size and still maintain quality of data.
Let’s take a look at some examples how rasters images are compressed