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>You know, I don't really personally care if the successor to JPEG is AVIF (based on AV1), HEIF (based on h.265, pushed by Apple), or WebP (based on V8). You s

>You know, I don't really personally care if the successor to JPEG is AVIF (based on AV1), HEIF (based on h.265, pushed by Apple), or WebP (based on V8). You should care because those formats aren't equivalent. In many important cases, WebP performs worse than the good old JPEG[1]. It's popular mainly because of Google's brand and cargo culting. HEIF is doomed because it isn't royalty-free. In my opinion, JPEG XL is the most interesting new format. Cloudinary published many blogposts comparing JPEG XL to the other formats, for example: [2][3]. I really recommend reading them. BTW, Chromium has recently added support for JPEG XL decoding[4]. It's currently hidden behind a feature flag. [1] - In medium to high BPP photographic images (which, I believe, is the most common use of lossy image compression) and in generation loss tests. [2] - https://cloudinary.com/blog/time_for_next_gen_codecs_to_dethrone_jpeg https://cloudinary.com/blog/time_for_next_gen_codecs_to_deth... [3] - https://cloudinary.com/blog/how_jpeg_xl_compares_to_other_image_codecs https://cloudinary.com/blog/how_jpeg_xl_compares_to_other_im... [4] - https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/043d32542213b601bf5852f6cd5950c949f411fa https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/043d3254221...

jaffathecake 6y ago
We added a preview of the JPEG-XL encoder to https://squoosh.app https://squoosh.app (and WebPv2) so you can try it with your own images. In my experience, AVIF tends to outperform JXL in most web use-cases. However, for cases where the image should be really high quality (where the image is core content, like Flickr or Unsplash), the winner is less clear. Also, at those kinds of sizes, JPEG-XL's progressive rendering becomes an important factor. But seriously, there's so much hype around these image formats, the best thing to do is to test it with your own images and your own eyes.
- bscphil 6y ago
  > AVIF tends to outperform JXL in most web use-cases Matches my experience pretty well. AVIF can look quite good (for web purposes) at very low bitrates, while JXL falls apart. (JXL actually has two different modes of operation - modular mode is better at lower bitrates, but it's not considered to be JXL's main mode of operation.) JPEG-XL seems to be designed to replace JPEG for high quality photographic images, and in my experience it's fantastic at this. I see much better results at higher bitrates (compared to AVIF), and JXL can also losslessly compress JPEGs to a smaller size. There's a comparison between AVIF and JPEG-XL here https://afontenot.github.io/image-formats-comparison https://afontenot.github.io/image-formats-comparison although JPEG-XL is rather fast moving target at the moment and the comparison hasn't been updated in quite a few months.
- TD-Linux 6y ago
  AV1 has some support for progressive images as well. It hasn't been used much in AVIF yet, though there are a couple of PRs that contain some sample images encoded progressively: https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/134 https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/134 https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/131 https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/131
jaffathecake 6y ago
> In medium to high BPP photographic images (which, I believe, is the most common use of lossy image compression) I don't think this is true. Most web images shouldn't be "near lossless" they should be "not ugly", with the exception being images that are core content (think Flickr or Unsplash). If a tech product is illustrated with a child laughing at some salad, or whatever, it doesn't matter if some detail is lost, as long as it doesn't look ugly-compressed. Users will be scrolling past it, not zooming in and comparing it to the original. I did a performance analysis of a set of sites recently, and many have images that are 10x bigger than necessary https://jakearchibald.com/2021/f1-perf-part-2/#issue-large-primary-image https://jakearchibald.com/2021/f1-perf-part-2/#issue-large-p....
- ehnto 6y ago
  I mostly agree, with the caveat that a great deal of web traffic is now image sharing social sites and so any reduction in traffic size is still a good thing. I also want to point out that people can tell the difference between when something should be good quality and when it doesn't matter. Like even on Instagram, people will forgive a pixelated meme but still be disappointed by a portrait with compression artifacts.
  - jaffathecake 6y ago
    In my experience, folks are referring to blocky JPEG compression in those cases. Or, for digital art, specifically chroma subsampling. I can't decide if Instagram falls under the like-Flickr use-case or not. I think on mobile, AVIF-style compression would still be best, but it could be different on desktop.
- ksec 6y ago
  There was a paper with stats from Google Chrome, with over a billion of image sampled, saying 90%+ of image on the web has BPP over 1.0. And the median of image BPP is between 2.0 to 3.0 depending on image dimensions. I keep swinging from one side to another, on one hand I want image size to be much smaller ( HEIF / AVIF or better yet, something based on VVC ) BPP 0.1+, on the other hand a 500x500 image is only 32KB at BPP 1.0 with JPEGXL. Right now I am mostly alining to JPEGXL because I think AVIF or others Ultra Low BitRate format are sort of over optimising, not to mention JPEGXL decode faster and uses less resources. So it seems to be the most practical one.
AuryGlenz 6y ago
As a photographer I just want a format that I can send to clients (and for my own sake) that’s better than 8 bit jpegs. Bonus points for lossless editing and re-saving. It’s ridiculous how we’ve been stuck on such an out of date format for so long when everything else in photography has gotten so advanced.
bobmaxup 6y ago
> That precision suffices for images with a standard dynamic-range (SDR) and a limited color-gamut like sRGB Is there evidence that most people perceive a difference outside of this on popular consumer hardware?
- giantrobot 6y ago
  All OLED iPhones, iPad Pros, newer (2018+) Macs, and just about any "flagship" Android phone have HDR capable displays. There's tens if not hundreds of millions of devices that support HDR in the wild. Whether or not it's appreciated there's at least a huge population that can see HDR images correctly.
tootie 6y ago
Not just their brand and cult. It's because they control search, they count page speed as a ranking factor, their benchmarks tell you to prefer webp for better performance.

jaffathecake 6y ago

We added a preview of the JPEG-XL encoder to https://squoosh.app https://squoosh.app (and WebPv2) so you can try it with your own images. In my experience, AVIF tends to outperform JXL in most web use-cases. However, for cases where the image should be really high quality (where the image is core content, like Flickr or Unsplash), the winner is less clear. Also, at those kinds of sizes, JPEG-XL's progressive rendering becomes an important factor. But seriously, there's so much hype around these image formats, the best thing to do is to test it with your own images and your own eyes.

bscphil 6y ago
> AVIF tends to outperform JXL in most web use-cases Matches my experience pretty well. AVIF can look quite good (for web purposes) at very low bitrates, while JXL falls apart. (JXL actually has two different modes of operation - modular mode is better at lower bitrates, but it's not considered to be JXL's main mode of operation.) JPEG-XL seems to be designed to replace JPEG for high quality photographic images, and in my experience it's fantastic at this. I see much better results at higher bitrates (compared to AVIF), and JXL can also losslessly compress JPEGs to a smaller size. There's a comparison between AVIF and JPEG-XL here https://afontenot.github.io/image-formats-comparison https://afontenot.github.io/image-formats-comparison although JPEG-XL is rather fast moving target at the moment and the comparison hasn't been updated in quite a few months.
TD-Linux 6y ago
AV1 has some support for progressive images as well. It hasn't been used much in AVIF yet, though there are a couple of PRs that contain some sample images encoded progressively: https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/134 https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/134 https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/131 https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/av1-avif/pull/131

jaffathecake 6y ago

> In medium to high BPP photographic images (which, I believe, is the most common use of lossy image compression) I don't think this is true. Most web images shouldn't be "near lossless" they should be "not ugly", with the exception being images that are core content (think Flickr or Unsplash). If a tech product is illustrated with a child laughing at some salad, or whatever, it doesn't matter if some detail is lost, as long as it doesn't look ugly-compressed. Users will be scrolling past it, not zooming in and comparing it to the original. I did a performance analysis of a set of sites recently, and many have images that are 10x bigger than necessary https://jakearchibald.com/2021/f1-perf-part-2/#issue-large-primary-image https://jakearchibald.com/2021/f1-perf-part-2/#issue-large-p....

ehnto 6y ago
I mostly agree, with the caveat that a great deal of web traffic is now image sharing social sites and so any reduction in traffic size is still a good thing. I also want to point out that people can tell the difference between when something should be good quality and when it doesn't matter. Like even on Instagram, people will forgive a pixelated meme but still be disappointed by a portrait with compression artifacts.
- jaffathecake 6y ago
  In my experience, folks are referring to blocky JPEG compression in those cases. Or, for digital art, specifically chroma subsampling. I can't decide if Instagram falls under the like-Flickr use-case or not. I think on mobile, AVIF-style compression would still be best, but it could be different on desktop.
ksec 6y ago
There was a paper with stats from Google Chrome, with over a billion of image sampled, saying 90%+ of image on the web has BPP over 1.0. And the median of image BPP is between 2.0 to 3.0 depending on image dimensions. I keep swinging from one side to another, on one hand I want image size to be much smaller ( HEIF / AVIF or better yet, something based on VVC ) BPP 0.1+, on the other hand a 500x500 image is only 32KB at BPP 1.0 with JPEGXL. Right now I am mostly alining to JPEGXL because I think AVIF or others Ultra Low BitRate format are sort of over optimising, not to mention JPEGXL decode faster and uses less resources. So it seems to be the most practical one.

AuryGlenz 6y ago

As a photographer I just want a format that I can send to clients (and for my own sake) that’s better than 8 bit jpegs. Bonus points for lossless editing and re-saving. It’s ridiculous how we’ve been stuck on such an out of date format for so long when everything else in photography has gotten so advanced.

bobmaxup 6y ago

> That precision suffices for images with a standard dynamic-range (SDR) and a limited color-gamut like sRGB Is there evidence that most people perceive a difference outside of this on popular consumer hardware?

giantrobot 6y ago
All OLED iPhones, iPad Pros, newer (2018+) Macs, and just about any "flagship" Android phone have HDR capable displays. There's tens if not hundreds of millions of devices that support HDR in the wild. Whether or not it's appreciated there's at least a huge population that can see HDR images correctly.

tootie 6y ago

Not just their brand and cult. It's because they control search, they count page speed as a ranking factor, their benchmarks tell you to prefer webp for better performance.