The present invention is a method and apparatus for the lossless precompression and de-precompression of high resolution binary images that are to be stored or transmitted. More specifically, the present invention employs an area-based precompression/de-precompression technique that is particularly appropriate for high resolution bit replicated images. The technique searches for regularly sized image regions of a common color or binary state and represents the areas in a coded fashion. The compression technique employed by the present invention enables high resolution images to be compressed and stored or transmitted at an image size approximating the size of an image typically obtained by lossless compression of the original bitmap binary image from which the high resolution image was generated.