1. A method to control a quality of image information comprising: receiving one or more of an image, a sequence of images and a layer of an image; receiving an indication of a desired image quality for a reconstructed version of a compressed version of the one or more of the image, the sequence of images and the layer of the image; commencing compression of the one or more of the image, the sequence of images and the layer of the image including performing a wavelet transform and wavelet coefficient coding; estimating distortion caused by one or more of quantization distortion and truncation distortion, wherein the estimating of distortion is performed without measuring the distortion; estimating, using modeling, a quality of the reconstructed version of the one or more of the image, the sequence of images and the layer of the image based on the estimated distortion; automatically comparing, by a processor, the estimated quality to the desired image quality; and outputting the compressed version of the one or more of the image, the sequence of images and the layer of an image that meets the desired image quality.