Use a .conf file in your server, restricting compression to the right MIME types
for example in /etc/httpd/conf.d/enable_mod_deflate.conf:
# mod_deflate configuration
# Restrict compression to these MIME types
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml+rss
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/png
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/gif
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/jpeg
# Level of compression (Highest 9 - Lowest 1)
DeflateCompressionLevel 9
# Netscape 4.x has some problems.
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
# Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
don't forget to restart your servers
sudo service httpd restart