1. A method, comprising: non-uniformly downscaling an original input image according to a saliency map, wherein a deformed grid is computed based on the saliency map and used to non-uniformly downscale the original input image; creating a residual image using the original input image and the downscaled input image; encoding the downscaled input image to produce an encoded downscaled input image; and transmitting the encoded residual image, the deformed grid coordinates, and the encoded downscaled input image; wherein the non-uniform downscaling is performed with a non-uniform aspect ratio by performing the operations of: determining a number of columns of the saliency map with at least one salient pixel; determining a number of rows of the saliency map with at least one salient pixel; and determining the non-uniform aspect ratio by computing a x-axis scaling factor and a y-axis scaling factor based on the number of columns with at least one salient pixel and the number of rows with at least one salient pixel.