This paper presents the findings of a study conducted to compare the effects of WSQ and JPEG 2000 compression on 500 ppi fingerprint imagery at a typical operational compression rate of 0.55 bpp (bits per pixel), corresponding to an effective compression ratio of approximately 15:1. Compression effects are measured using peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), proportion of pixels changed via compression regardless of magnitude, and a frequency analytic method the Spectral Image Validation/Verification (SIVV) metric. Additional information regarding compression effects is provided by comparison of fingerprint minutia templates extracted for uncompressed and compressed versions of fingerprints. The study also examines comparative behavior of the two compression CODECs with respect to multiple compression cycles, recompression of images using dissimilar CODECs, and compression fidelity error as a function of compression bit rate.