How are centipawns calculated? I found on the Web some information what centipawns are. But how exactly programs calculate this loss? How can I recognize if one move will bring less centipawn loss that an another? Assuming both would not lead to a loss of a chess piece.
I think that's your question:

Q: How does a chess engine evaluate a chess position and give centipawns score?

I don't want to bore you with technical details, let me give you simple explanation:


Chess engine is able to evaluates a chess position and give a score


The score can depend on many factors, including but not limited to:


Material
Pawn structure
Mobility
King Safety



  https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Evaluation



Chess engine searches as many moves as possible and compare the moves by evaluation score. The best move is the move that gives the best score.
Now we know a chess engine can give a score. For convenience, they scale the scores to centipawns.