This paper presents the design of approximate 15-4 compressor using 5-3 compressors as basic module. Four different types of approximate 5-3 compressors are used in a 15-4 compressor for less power consumption and high pass rate. We have analysed the results in all the cases. A 16 × 16 bit multiplier is simulated using the proposed 15-4 compressor. Simulation results show that the multipliers with proposed approximate compressors achieve significant improvement in power as compared to the multipliers with accurate 15-4 compressor. Pass rate of the proposed multipliers are high as compared to other existing approximate multipliers. Finally, the proposed multiplier is used in image processing applications, where the peak signal to noise ratio of the image is measured. Quality of the image is compared with an accurate multiplier and the obtained results show that our proposed multiplier performs better than existing approximate multiplier.