A method for steganographic processing and compression of image data with negligible information loss, wherein said image data comprises noise and information. The method includes the steps of: acquiring image data to be processed and/or compressed, storing and/or transmitting the image data, and preparing the acquired image data for compression. The preparation step includes determining an input noise model and corresponding parameters adapted to reflect noise created by an image sensor used to capture said image data, and removing, with negligible information loss, noise from the acquired image data by use of the input noise model such as to produce noise-reduced image data.