Techniques are described for controlling image display via compression of image data in some image regions while performing less or no compression in other (e.g., peripheral view) regions, with color-specific compression preserving chromatic aberration compensation. Such techniques may be used with display panel(s) of a head-mounted display device used for virtual reality display. A primary region of an image at which to encode and display data at a highest resolution level may be determined by tracking a gaze of a user, while other secondary regions may be selected to be surrounding or other outside the primary region. In the secondary regions, image data for a first (e.g., green) color channel may be encoded at a first compression level for a first resolution level lower higher than for other second color channels, and HDR data may be compressed at higher compression levels than the color-specific data.