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Why is JPEG the de facto lossy compression format for photos? It always bugs me that video formats get something new every 5 or so years yet photos are in JPEGs
by junaru 6y ago
Why is JPEG the de facto lossy compression format for photos? It always bugs me that video formats get something new every 5 or so years yet photos are in JPEGs for decades.
- pridkett 6y agoiOS has been slowly making HEIF more common. It’s just that it takes a long time for the entire tooling chain to support it.
- zozbot234 6y agoHEIF is patent-encumbered and a non-starter.
- jsjohnst 6y agoHEIF is a container format and isn’t generally considered “patent-encumbered”. HEVC (which is one of several image formats supported inside HEIF) is probably what you’re referring too.
- berkut 6y agoEven Safari doesn't support HEIF though (even on iOS), so for web, it's not even there yet.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 6y agoBecause by and large it’s good enough outside of special cases. Video formats get something new pretty much by necessity as resolution and quality increases mean older formats strain links. Serving a 100k heif instead of a 500k jpeg is not going to materially change much.
- joosters 6y agoAlso, just about every JPEG image out there is pretty unoptimised, tools like ImageOptim and others can squeeze out more space without any visible quality loss. But few people bother to optimise their images, precisely because the default is small enough.
- sp332 6y agoJPEG encoders got better over time.
- mceachen 6y agoThe past couple decades (really! see JPEG2000!) have seen fairly regular introductions of new lossy image formats, but JPEG continues to win due to: 1. widespread support 2. "good enough" compression Formats that compress better, like HEIC and webp, are only ~2x better, have sparse software/hardware support, and are likely to be patent-encumbered. If I had to guess, formats that support HDR or other features haven't seen adoption due to a lack of widespread display support (in the case of HDR) and a lack of user interest. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphics_file_formats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_graphics_file_fo... for a bunch of examples.