406 points

TL:DW, JPEG is getting old in the tooth, which prompted the creation of JPEG XL, which is a fairly future-proof new compression standard that can compress images to the same file size or smaller than regular JPEG while having massively higher quality.

However, JPEG XL support was removed from Google Chrome based browsers in favor of AVIF, a standalone image compression derived from the AV1 video compression codec that is decidedly not future-proof, having some hard-coded limitations, as well as missing some very nice to have features that JPEG XL offers such as progressive image loading and lower hardware requirements. The result of this is that JPEG XL adoption will be severely hamstrung by Google’s decision, which is ultimately pretty lame.

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237 points

This is why Google keeps getting caught up in monopoly lawsuits.

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148 points

Modern Google is becoming the Microsoft of the 90s

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59 points

And they’ll make eleventy bajillion dollars in the meantime, plenty of money to pay their inevitable punitive “fines.”

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14 points

Which is funny and said because Microsoft is also the Microsoft of the 90s.

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13 points

Microsoft is still like this

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172 points

I tried JPEG XL and it didn’t even make my files extra large. It actually made them SMALLER.

False advertising.

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25 points

I think you took the wrong enlargement pill.

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6 points

Just set the pills to wumbo.

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69 points

Jpeg XL isn’t backwards compatible with existing JPEG renderers. If it was, it’d be a winner. We already have PNG and JPG and now we’ve got people using the annoying webP. Adding another format that requires new decoder support isn’t going to help.

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63 points

“the annoying webp” AFAIK is the same problem as JPEG XL, apps just didn’t implement it.

It is supported in browsers, which is good, but not in third party apps. AVIF or whatever is going to have the same problem.

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42 points
*

Jpeg XL isn’t backwards compatible with existing JPEG renderers. If it was, it’d be a winner.

According to the video, and this article, JPEG XL is backwards compatible with JPEG.

But I’m not sure if that’s all that necessary. JPEG XL was designed to be a full, long term replacement to JPEG. Old JPEG’s compression is very lossy, while JPEG XL, with the same amount of computational power, speed, and size, outclasses it entirely. PNG is lossless, and thus is not comparable since the file size is so much larger.

JPEG XL, at least from what I’m seeing, does appear to be the best full replacement for JPEG (and it’s not like they can’t co-exist).

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27 points

It’s only backwards compatible in that it can re-encode existing jpeg content into the newer format without any image loss. Existing browsers and apps can’t render jpegXL without adding a new decoder.

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3 points

JPEG XL in lossless mode actually gives around 50% smaller file sizes than PNG

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36 points

My understanding is that webp isn’t actually all that bad from a technical perspective, it was just annoying because it started getting used widely on the web before all the various tools caught up and implemented support for it.

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0 points

It’s certainly not bad. It’s just not quite as good.

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21 points

I just wish more software would support webp files. I remember Reddit converting every image to webp to save on space and bandwidth (smart, imo) but not allowing you to directly upload webp files in posts because it wasn’t a supported file format.

If webp was just more standardized, I’d love to use it more. It would certainly save me a ton of storage space.

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17 points

So… your solution is to stick with extremely dated and objectively bad file formats? You using Windows 95?

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3 points

What’s wrong with PNG?

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2 points

That’s why all my files are in TGA.

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14 points

Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t this like complaining that a PlayStation 2 can’t play PS5 games?

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1 point
*

It’s a different culture between PCs and consoles. Consoles are standardized computers - they all have the same* hardware. Game developers can be confident in what functionality their games have access to, and so use the best they can.

PCs in comparison are wildly different from user to user due to being modular: you can pick from many parts to create a computer. As such, devs tend to focus on what most PC’s can do and make them optionally better if the PC has access to supporting hardware (e.g. RTX ray-tracing cores).

Besides, video games are drastically complex in comparison to static images 😛

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11 points

All the cool kids use .HEIF anyway

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10 points

I use jpeg 2000

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9 points

You can’t add new and better stuff while staying compatible with the old stuff. Especially not when your goal is compact files (or you’d just embed the old format).

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9 points

Isn’t that the same as other newer formats though?

There’s always something new, and if the new thing is better, adding/switching to it is the better move.

Or am I missing something about the other formats like webp?

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5 points

You have to offer something compelling for everyone. Just coming out with yet another new standard™ isn’t enough. As pointed out earlier, we already have:

  • jpeg
  • Png
  • Webp
  • HEIC

What’s the point of adding another encoder/decoder to the table when PNG and JPEG are still “good enough”?

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13 points

Look it’s all actually about re-encumberancing image file formats back into corporate controlled patented formats. If we would collectively just spend time and money and development resources expanding and improving PNG and gif formats that are no longer patent encumbered, we’d all live happily ever after.

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1 point

its royalty free and has an open source implementation, what more could you want?

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4 points

No patent encumbrance. That was the entire point.

Clawing control of patent infected media standards is far more important for a healthy open internet built on open standards that is not subject to the whims and controls of capital investment groups eating up companies to exert control of the entire technology standards pipeline.

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1 point

JPEG-XL is in no way patent encumbered. Neither is AVIF. I don’t know what you’re talking about

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0 points

https://encode.su/threads/3863-RANS-Microsoft-wins-data-encoding-patent

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/

https://avifstudio.com/blogs/faq/avif-patents/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26910515

https://aomedia.org/press releases/the-alliance-for-open-media-statement/

If AVIF was not patent encumbered, AOMedia would not need to have a Patent License to allow open source use.

A majority of the most recent standards are effectively cabal esque private groups of Corporations that hold patents that on the underlying technology and then license the patents among each other as part of the standards org and throw a license bone towards open source. That can all be undone by the patent holders at their whim.

There’s no need to create a standard format that’s patent encumbered especially if they don’t ever intend to monetize that paten,t. It’s all about maintaining control of intellectual property and especially who was allowed and when they are allowed to profit from the standards.

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7 points

Why was it not included? AVIF creator influence bias. It’s a good story.

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5 points

Google’s handling of jxl makes a lot more sense after the jpegli announcement. It’s apparent now that they declined to support jxl in favor of cloning many of jxl’s features in a format they control.

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3 points

Why wasn’t PNG enough to replace jpeg?

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19 points

PNG is a lossless format, and hence results in fairly large file sized compared to compressed formats, so they’re solving different issues.

JPEG XL is capable of being either lossy or lossless, so it sorta replaces both JPEG and PNG

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3 points

not enough elitists

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1 point

And JPEG2000 is what’s used in Digital Cinema Package (DCP) - that’s the file format used to distribute feature films. That’s not going away soon.

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1 point

Does jpegxl work on firefox?

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4 points

Only in Nightly and not by default (you need to enable it).

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1 point

It doesn’t work anywhere because full support requires so much stuff that no browser can be compatible.

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228 points

Without jpeg compression artifacts how the hell are we supposed to know which memes are fresh and which memes are vintage???

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52 points

I still think it’s bullshit that 20-year-old photos now look the same as 20-second-old photos. Young people out there with baby pictures that look like they were taken yesterday.

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56 points

We need a file format that degrades into black and white over time.

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5 points

The tradition has normally been to just have newer image formats and image-generation hardware and software that are more capable or higher fidelity so that the old stuff starts to look old in comparison to the new stuff.

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3 points

Could probably pull that off with meta information to determine the age of the photo.

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3 points

lol nice one. It’s shocking how far we’ve come in quality.

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71 points

Pretty much sums it up. JPEGXL could’ve been the standard by now if Google would stop kneecapping it in favor of its own tech, now we’re stuck in an awkward position where neither of them are getting as much traction because nobody can decide on which to focus on.

Also, while Safari does support AVIF, there are some features it doesn’t support like moving images, so we have to wait on that too… AVIF isn’t bad, but it doesn’t matter if it takes another 5+ years to get global support for a new image format…

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49 points

People are quick to blame Google for the slow uptake of Jpeg XL, but I don’t think that can be the whole story. Lots of other vendors, including non-commercial free software projects, have also been slow to support it. Gimp for example still only supports it via a plugin.

But if it’s not just a matter of Google being assholes, what’s the actual issue with Jpeg XL uptake? No clue, does anyone know?

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38 points

GIMP supports JPEG XL natively in 3.0 development versions. If I remember correctly GIMP 2.10 was released before JPEG-XL was ready, so I think that’s the reason. They could have added support in smaller update though, which was the case with AVIF.

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29 points
*

Lots of other vendors, including non-commercial free software projects, have also been slow to support it.

checks

It doesn’t look like the Lemmy Web UI supports JPEG XL uploads, for one.

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12 points

Imgur doesn’t let me upload it either, I have to use general file hosts

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2 points

The problem with XL is that it has way too many features. HDR, for example. Firefox doesn’t support HDR at all, Chrome added HDR image (not video) support just late last year. And that’s just one feature of XL… Even if both Google and Mozilla will start actively working on support we won’t see anything useful for a few years. And then how do you even create images in the first place?

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-67 points

The issue with jpegxl is that in reality jpeg is fine for 99% of images on the internet.

If you need lossless, you can have PNG.

“But JPEGXL can save 0,18mb in compression!” Shut up nerd everyone has broadband it doesn’t matter

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55 points
*

What a dumb comment.

All of that adds up when you have thousands or tens of thousands of images. Or even when you’re just loading a very media-heavy website.

The compression used by JPEG-XL is very, very good. As is the decoding/encoding performance, both in single core and in multi-core applications.

It’s royalty free. Supports animation. Supports transparency. Supports layers. Supports HDR. Supports a bit depth of 32 compared to, what, 8?

JPEG-XL is what we should be striving for.

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-28 points
Removed by mod
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49 points

That 0.18mb accumulates quickly on the server’s side if you have 10000 people trying to access that image at the same time. And there are millions it not billions of images on the net. Just because we have the resources doesn’t mean we should squander them…that’s how you end up with chat apps taking multiple gigabytes of RAM.

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11 points

“I’m very small minded and am not important or smart enough to have ever worked on a large-scale project in my life, but I will assume my lack of experience has earned me a sense of authority” -Redisdead

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8 points
*

While AVIF saves about 2/3 in my manga downloads (usually jpg). 10 GB to 3 GB. Btw, most comicbook apps support avif.

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-40 points

10 whole GB of storage? I understand now why you need such an ultimate compression technology, this is an insurmountable amount of data in these harrowing times where you can buy a flash card the size of a fingernail that can hold that amount about 25 times.

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5 points

Check how large your photos library is on your computer. Now wouldn’t it be nice if it was 40% smaller?

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-1 points

I have several TBs of storage. I don’t remember the last time I paid attention to it.

I don’t even use jpeg for it. I have all the raw pics from my DSLR and lossless PNGs for stuff I edited.

It’s quite literally a non issue. Storage is cheap af.

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-1 points
*

It’s competing with webp and it helps prevent jpg artifacts when downloaded multiple times

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1 point

prevent jpg artifacts when downloaded multiple times

That’s not how downloading works

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32 points

Nobody remember JPEG2000 ?!?

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22 points

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7 points

“In the year two thouuusaaaaaannd, in the year two thouuusaaaaaannd”

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15 points

Jpeg2000 was patent encumbered. They waived the patents but that wasn’t guaranteed going forward.

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5 points

Yeah but it wasn’t free, right?

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