Fractal compression worked automatically (grad student not required) but it typically took hours on the hardware of the late 80s/early 90s. And ISTR it worked w

Fractal compression worked automatically (grad student not required) but it typically took hours on the hardware of the late 80s/early 90s. And ISTR it worked well on particular images, but not generally. It's likely it would work much better on modern hardware, but it was heavily IP-encumbered back in the day which caused almost everybody working on image compression algorithms to ignore it. The patents have probably all expired by now so it might be worth another look.