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Journey to JPEG XL: open-source experiments shaped the future of image coding
- rowbin 4mo agoThat's rich coming from the company that tried to kill it. The audacity...
- rowbin 4mo ago> Safari (2023) led among major browsers, while Firefox and Chrome currently maintain experimental support.
- Gigachad 4mo agoMaintain in a sense. Google introduced it in Chrome as an experimental flag, then removed it with no real explanation, and only just brought it back.
- spartanatreyu 4mo agoYeah, but they left out that Chrome removed their own support for JPEG XL saying no one in the industry was in favour of it despite everyone seeing it was the future screaming for it and building support for it into their own products. Chrome's blink was the only major browser engine not supporting it and that prevented it from becoming a web standard and they refused to acknowledge they were wrong. Chrome only backtracked once jpeg-xl was subsumed into the PDF standard because if Chrome did not support jpeg-xl, they would by extension also not be supporting pdf.
- Gigachad 4mo agojpeg xl is also now used for the latest version of the DNG raw image format, and the iphone now encodes raw images as jpeg xl in DNG. It's so clearly the future for photography that Google is holding back. Apple surprisingly has been the first with full support everywhere in their OSs and in Safari.
- Caspy7 4mo agoSafari is currently lacking animation and progressive decoding - still ahead of everyone else currently. Looks like by the end of the year we can expect Chrome and Firefox support.
- ksec 4mo agoI just wanted to add the decision for JXL inside DNG was well known even before it happened and Chrome still said no. Adobe and Intel along with plenty of other players in the industry screams this is so good they are all adding support. But still Google said no. And to make matter worst the publish the worst comparison document and benchmarks for AVIF against JXL.
- theturtle 4mo ago[dead]
- magicalist 4mo ago> That's rich coming from the company that tried to kill it This post is written by three of the authors of the JPEG XL spec, implementors of the reference and rust implementations of libjxl, and...longtime google employees.
- orbital-decay 4mo agoFrom what I can tell, it's written by Gemini
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- fc417fc802 4mo agoYou say that as though Google isn't notorious for killing their own successful and well received products for seemingly no reason. It's incontrovertible that Google did attempt to kill browser adoption of jxl at one point. Thankfully they seem to have reversed course.
- qingcharles 4mo agoThey only reversed under pressure from the Safari and Firefox folks. The killing of JXL did push the ever-talented Jyrki to create jpegli, which was honestly a wonder.
- PunchyHamster 4mo agoFirefox isn't even enabling it
- Tagbert 4mo agoThey are working on it. It is in Firefox Nightly behind a flag.
- cyberrock 4mo ago
- gcr 4mo agoFor context, Google initially refused to merge JpegXL as a strategy play to promote AVIF, which was in use by other teams (i think Photos?). Internally, chrome engineers were supportive of jxl but were overridden by leadership. I guess today’s post represents a change. I don’t have any public evidence to support my claim, sorry. Take it or leave it
- ksec 4mo agoI think it is quite the opposite. There were some support of JXL but leadership of Google, Android and Chrome all wanted AVIF. It was a perfect opportunity to announced AVIF with AV2, may be taking the chance to fix issues that JXL wins AV1. But that didn't happen.
- JyrkiAlakuijala 4mo agoWe (Google) built JPEG XL (together with Cloudinary). The main photography mode and the JPEG compatibility mode is from Google. Chrome decided not to be an early adopter for good reasons that they have publicly documented, but that did nothing to JPEG XL. Particularly, it did not kill JPEG XL. Others, DNG, DICOM, PDF, EPUB, iOS, Safari, etc. integrated it early regardless.
- lousken 4mo agoOut of experimental when?
- Gigachad 4mo agoProbably got some time to go. The new rust decoder likely needs more time to be proven reliable and safe, and Firefox doesn't even get the flag to turn it on until the next release 152.
- neuroelectron 4mo agoAI slop article
- JyrkiAlakuijala 4mo agoI wrote it, with some help from Gemini as my own English is clumsy and expensive to correct manually, and created the "photo" and the "chart". I am to blame. I thought the story of a 10+ year running OSS project with intermediate milestones would be fascinating for people.
- Mindless2112 4mo ago> In this Gemini-reconstructed scene, ... I'm generally pretty pro-AI, but I find this icky. Of course, I wouldn't have noticed except the whiteboard drawing seemed not quite right, so I'll probably be fooled in the future.
- zerobees 4mo agoBased on what I've heard, Google is monitoring per-org usage and strongly / incessantly encouraging teams to experiment with the technology, so a lot of tokens get spent on pointless stuff like that. The preceding diagram, which is needlessly busy and blurry, appears to be AI-generated too.
- JyrkiAlakuijala 4mo agoThis was not a factor. It was either staging the photograph or AI. Photographing inside the office can be a complex process with seeking appropriate permissions, and I didn't have an alternative space to do the photography. AI felt like an easier solution.
- BugsJustFindMe 4mo ago> It was either staging the photograph or AI. The third option is to just not, because an image of two people standing in front of a white board has little value even when the photo isn't staged and the white board content isn't generic.
- markdog12 4mo agoCame here to say the same thing. Why add this fake image?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- jazzyjackson 4mo agoWebsite Obesity mentioned ! [0] This project led me to propose the Taft Test: Does your page design improve when you replace every image with William Howard Taft? If so, then, maybe all those images aren’t adding a lot to your article. At the very least, leave Taft there! You just admitted it looks better. [0] (idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity): https://web.archive.org/web/20260421022440/https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20260421022440/https://idlewords...
- yboris 4mo agoWeird they don't name Jon Sneyers - a person pivotal in creation of JPEG XL Here's a blog post by him: https://cloudinary.com/blog/2026-the-year-of-jpeg-xl https://cloudinary.com/blog/2026-the-year-of-jpeg-xl
- JyrkiAlakuijala 4mo agoNo, it is normal. Similarly Jon's blog post does not name any of us by name.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- xuzhenpeng 4mo ago[flagged]
- Gigachad 4mo agoHuge fan of JXL, but this article feels pretty AI sloppy. Not much said here, coming from the google blog I was hoping for some news about how they are pushing the format forward by introducing decoders in to Android and enabling on Chrome. Android is the only mainstream OS that does not support JPEG XL right now.
- UnfitFootprint 4mo agoNot to mention those IMAGES. Slop diagrams hurt
- breppp 4mo agoI initially read the articles without images (they don't load for an unrelated reason) and actually felt it gave a good summary of JPEGXL underlying technologies and history, I also learned some new stuff. I think the images might give a slop framing which is undue
- bnolsen 4mo agoI personally think something like the qok format is a better way to go. Make something that performs well and is dirt simple to implement.
- pezezin 4mo agoQOI is cute as an experiment, but it is not a serious image format unless you work in extremely constrained environments.
- dimatura 4mo agoQOI supports a VERY limited set of use cases compared to jpegXL.
- JyrkiAlakuijala 4mo agoNo it would not, qoi falls behind even my 2011 WebP lossless design. Also, it is not a competition for the shortest specification. If it was, still good. Jpeg xl spec is about half the size of the original jpeg spec.
- LoganDark 4mo agoI'm behind -- did Chrome un-remove JXL support? Google is suddenly behind it again? Why/how did they change their minds?
- Gigachad 4mo agoThey added it back as an experimental flag again. Likely the new rust based decoder and adoption in to other platforms and standards changed their decision.
- Caspy7 4mo agoYes. They're adding it back to Chrome. This last January at FOSDEM there was a panel with representatives from different browser companies. During the panel Kadir Topal, a web platform product manager at Google, indicated that because of the interest they saw in JPEG XL through the Interop Project that they changed their course on supporting it. https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop The video of the panel can be found at https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7E7387-browser_in_2026_-_panel_discussion/ https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7E7387-browser_in_202... . He starts speaking on the issue at about 13:00
- ksec 4mo agoThat is a very cherishable way to put it. In realty JXL has been on one of the highest request in Interop for at least 2 if not 3 years, and both Microsoft Edge and Safari have spoken about frustration of "certain features" not being implemented despite high number of votes.
- 201984 4mo agoMostly off topic, but why is the spec for JPEG and JPEG XL paywalled? I wouldn't call them open standards if they're not available free-of-charge to the public.
- Gigachad 4mo agoIt's an open standard because the concepts and reference implementation are free and open source even if the PDF is paywalled. Realistically you could just pirate the PDF and write a jpeg xl encoder/decoder and your code wouldn't be infringing on any patents.
- 201984 4mo agoSeems "closed but royalty free" would be a more accurate description then.
- Gigachad 4mo agoSplitting hairs on terminology I guess. Very few people are interested in the PDF that specifies the format vs being able to include decoders in software and on devices without paying a royalty for every device. There are alternative documents and the last draft copy which are free legally. As well as the reference code.
- ksec 4mo agoBefore the world of internet, Open does not always mean free. They are two different concept. A proprietary codec isn't open, and you can't use it everywhere unless the owner allows you to or provided tools and support. Microsoft with their WMV and Realmedia with RVMB for example. H.263 and H.264 was called an open standard at the time, any body can buy and implement it.
- aidenn0 4mo ago"Open Standard" means "Anybody is allowed to buy it"
- ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
- _HMCB_ 4mo agoGoogle spearheaded this and yet their browser only has experimental support? While Safari shipped it in 2023? At least, that’s how I’m reading this.
- mceachen 4mo agoIt's worse: Google added and then dropped even experimental support of jxl in 2021-2022. Several years later they adopted the rust jxl library, but have kept it behind experimental flags.
- taikahessu 4mo agoCan someone explain where are we at the image processing world/timeline? Why do coding tools suggest to me .avif and .webp, and the support of these lags in Windows OS and then we have things like JpegXL and Jpeg2000 or whatever others are there flying around? Why is it so hard to find our next "jpg format"?
- gforce_de 4mo agoIt's all about licences. If you need the images for the web: go for jpegli, webp and avif - the distance to jpegxl or webp2 is not worth the hassle: https://show.quicky.club/results/14/f8/f1/d8db84d57222d32db6bdc92110c2cecbcda7035123ea80814ee1820c76-612851.html https://show.quicky.club/results/14/f8/f1/d8db84d57222d32db6...
- qingcharles 4mo agoAgree. JXL won't be baseline for at least three years.
- Gigachad 4mo agoAVIF and webp kind of only exist for the web, they get used when you want to really crunch down on data as much as possible. They aren’t really used for files you’d save on your computer or get out of a camera. JPEG XL is replacing regular jpeg and heif for photography. It offers 16 bit color rather than 8 from jpeg and HDR support along with a ton of extra features. Every OS but Android supports it, safari supports it, chrome and Firefox have it behind a beta flag.
- Yokohiii 4mo ago> AVIF and webp kind of only exist for the web, they get used when you want to really crunch down on data as much as possible. Speaking only for webp here. It is designed to balance download and decompression time to load faster than it's competitors. Compressed filesize isn't generally smaller and compression time is notoriously slow.
- Theodores 4mo ago
- apt-get 4mo agoThe sloppa in this article is... offending. The obvious AI headings, pointless genned image of people (I'm starting to think islam had a point with discouraging depictions of human figures), and especially the blurry, artifacted, distractingly skeuomorphic diagram, with random wire traces going everywhere... this is a technical blog, not an investor sales pitch! Every time I see one of these, I have to double-check for a second if I'm not on some phishing SEO site! If even Google, previously a gold standard of technical writing, is falling prey to this kind of laziness, then I have nothing to worry about -- knowing how to write without a language model in the driver's seat is gonna be a top tier skill in the future... A damn shame too, as I've been following the progress of JXL in the standardization pipeline for a few years now and was quite interested in the historical breakdown, but all that's gonna stick with me from this is the disrespect I felt as a reader.
- JyrkiAlakuijala 4mo agoI spent 10+ years in building JPEG XL and I'm proud of the result. It wasn't always easy times. It is not so bad people can see what I look like and take a peek what the process was to get there. This article is not about the entropy codes and predictors, memory bandwidth and decision trees, but about the long horizon planning in corporate-driven OSS efforts and being connected to both community and cross-industry.
- BugsJustFindMe 4mo agoThat doesn't sound like a denial to me. Your years working on JPEGXL are extremely admirable, and you deserve to be recognized for it, but the gratuitous use of genAI in this post is also insulting to humans. The world isn't improved by a fabricated photo of a fake setting with an actor looks like you but isn't standing in front of a white board that says basically nothing.
- JyrkiAlakuijala 4mo agoI made that AI rendering and consider it demonstrates the conceptual discussions we had likely better than what an actual whiteboard drawing would look like. An actual whiteboard drawing from our day to day work would be very confusing without a lot of context and discussion. I have to admit that whiteboard drawings were somewhat rare in our real JPEG XL development, but it has been an intensively collaborative effort.
- supermatt 4mo agoConveniently forgetting how they removed the jpeg-xl support from the chrome codebase despite overwhelming developer backlash that they then proceeded to ignore for over a year. They literally tried to kill it - stating (nonsensical) reasons why it was obsolete and unneeded. And since now the rest of the world have adopted it despite Google, they have crawled out of their slime pits praising themselves for its development with only a passing mention of cloudinary? Sickening.