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"For non-photographic images, the argument that “they should be vector images” doesn't hold up because many images could be vector images but aren't, and they c

"For non-photographic images, the argument that “they should be vector images” doesn't hold up because many images could be vector images but aren't, and they can't be vectorized perfectly. “The world should be different” is not a justifiable defense against optimizing for the way the world actually is." This is a good paragraph. I see people forget to apply that last sentence all the time.

karim79 13d ago
Agreed. JPG is the most popular format for photography. PNG, the lossless format is great for diagrams and stuff with sharp edges. It can be "compressed" via dithering and quantization. GIF is there... because it will always be there because it's just a hit that will never go away. It's also lossless (when discounting colour depth). The new formats are interesting webp, avif, JXL and so on. Jpeg classic is the clear winner IMHO and will probably never be less relevant than the new fancier formats. JPG even does text and sharp edges, reds, and so on well if you tell your process to take into account chroma subsampling! It's magic and it puts food on my table.
- Gigachad 13d ago
  Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 video with no sound. Modern video formats are so much better that they are a no brainer to use while the word gif just got used to refer to looping video without sound rater than the literal gif image format.
  - karim79 13d ago
    Precisely. Kind of reminds me of "Hoover" or "Kleenex". Coca cola even. It has brand equity which means it's not going away any time soon.
  - vohk 13d ago
    Reminds me of when Imgur started trying to push changing gifs over to gifv, which were just mp4 with a strange new file extension. I didn't like their approach but it really was such an improvement on file size and quality.
  - bawolff 13d ago
    Not to mention if you for some odd reason wanted to do gif-style animations, you can also do it with apng or webp. You shouldn't, real video format makes more sense, but even if you did there is still no reason to use gif.
    - mitxela 13d ago
      Browsers only supported animated gif, not any other animated format
      - miladyincontrol 13d ago
        What do you mean? Most browsers support animated jpeg xl, avif, webp and apng just fine.
        madwolf 13d ago
        Perhaps the clue is in the past tense "supported". Nowadays browsers support many formats, but in the "olden days" gif was the only way to get animations in browsers without plugins like Macromedia Flash...
        deleted 13d ago
        [deleted]
        bawolff 13d ago
        Support was added a decade ago (chrome 59 (2017), firefox 3 (2008)), so you have to go back quite a while.
      - out_of_protocol 13d ago
        also, don't forget - actual video format is better for animated stuff. Current default approach is .webm which is standardized .mkv container + vp9 (or av1) video + opus audio (usually no audio to as a feature parity to gif). IMO animated picture formats like .avifs are very backwards and don't add much
  - hulitu 13d ago
    > Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 video with no sound. Then, long live the iMessage and Whatsup exploits, because SW developers are not able to do things right.
  - ButlerianJihad 13d ago
    I began a dispute on the English Wikipedia which revealed that more than a few people use “GIF” to describe, not a file format, but a visual style of looping animation.
  - account42 13d ago
    The major blunder here is browsers refusing to support silent videos in <img> tags etc. so we end up with all these hacks. Instead we got animated webp that you can't use for progressive enhancement because it doesn't have its own mime type and browsers reported support for image/webp before implementing animation support. And webp is also very limited when it comes to inter-frame compression for no good reason at all.
    - tjoff 13d ago
      Gif doesn't mean "no sound" anymore. Gif is more or less "short video", which broke a lot of assumptions at first but we have pretty much passed that transition and it makes sense for what they are used for today. That ship has sailed.
      - Gigachad 13d ago
        Gif certainly does mean no sound. Look at discord, telegram or literally any app that says “gif” and it’s no sound video.
        tjoff 12d ago
        Those are messaging/communication apps,sound in those apps can be quite disruptive so that doesn't surprise me at all. It has nothing to do with the original gif, it is just that gif is now synonymous with short clip (with or without sound) and sound in that context is disruptive. Go to google.com, search for images and select image type gif and you will get mp4s with sound.
        duskwuff 12d ago
        Telegram's usage of "GIF" (any short video without sound) is incredibly weird and frequently goes against users' expectations. I wouldn't treat that as definitive.
      - zbentley 13d ago
        I ... what? I've never heard anyone conflate the two--not teenagers, non-technical adults, or software people. Most folks know that "GIF" means "moving image that can be easily shared but has no sound and usually crap quality", not a video/audio clip.
  - kps 13d ago
    I am sure that none of the `.gif` files on my computer have been silently replaced. And there absolutely are cases where a lossless GIF is smaller than a lossy video format.
- frej 13d ago
  Jpg, does not do text well, at its regular file size.And somewhat related it has no alpha channel.
  - lgkrnkglwn 13d ago
    JNG (jpeg network graphics) is essentially jpeg that support alpha channel.
    - quikee 11d ago
      But supported by no browser today and software support in general is quite limited. If the PNG authors would just incorporate this possibility into PNG from start it would be interesting, but it's too late now.
- mikae1 13d ago
  > PNG, the lossless format is great for diagrams and stuff with sharp edges. But also, like GIF, it's pointless when lossless WebP exists and is supported everywhere. It's more efficient. Lossy WebP does not make as much sense though since jpegli entered the game. OP has made https://halide.cx/iris/ https://halide.cx/iris/ which could make lossy WebP make sense, but it's not open source or generally available. > The new formats are interesting webp, avif, JXL and so on. WebP was introduced 15 years ago. New relative to JPEG perhaps, but certainly not new.
  - nananana9 13d ago
    PNGs will persist because I know that they're lossless by looking at the filename. When I hit File > Save as .png, I don't have to inspect output metadata (that image viewers don't expose) or play around with exporter settings. It's unfortunate that we didn't give lossless webps a separate extension. Frankly I think even saving them as .png would've better than what we have now - people roughly understand that a .png is an image without artifacts, and any self-respecting image viewer will inspect magic bytes before opening a file anyways.
    - edflsafoiewq 13d ago
      Being lossless is a function of the whole pipeline from an input image to an output image. The last step being encode to PNG doesn't guarantee anything about losslessness.
      - xigoi 13d ago
        Lossless means that the file encodes the exact same information that was given to the encoder. This is a property of the format.
        ZeroGravitas 13d ago
        Yes but people add pre-preprocessor steps to image formats, like blurring jpegs or lowering bit depth in PNGs to make them more compressible.
- lgkrnkglwn 13d ago
  Jpeg LS do support lossless images.
  - quikee 11d ago
    But this is quite a different format than JPEG or better said the subset of JPEG that we know today as JPEG format and the JPEG encoder/decoders support. The whole JPEG format did have support for a lossless mode for JPEG (different one than JPEG LS), arithmetic coding and 12-bit images too, but those features just didn't make it into the implementations of the format (arithmetic coding initially did, but was removed from popular implementations because of patents).
- mitxela 13d ago
  PNG was once (win98 era) the sparkling new format that nothing supported yet. Operating systems shouldn't waste their time supporting it.
  - fingerlocks 13d ago
    Png is still being updated, just last year it was updated to support a wider color space than any other web format. This shipped in all browsers before the official spec was publicly so you’ve been seeing Png upgrades without even realizing it
- mschuetz 13d ago
  Gif is still there because it's still often the only option for frictionless video embedding. Embedded videos usually come with a video player that hardly ever quite works out well, often not starting automatically, not looping, or showing video player UI elementa that shouldnt be shown.
dada78641 13d ago
"These should just be vector images instead" is an argument made by someone who has never in their life attempted to create a vector image.
- Pxtl 13d ago
  Also it would be nice to have a good standard vector format that isn't the complete kitchen-sink that is SVG, but we don't have that. We needed "jpeg but for vector graphics" and instead we got "html but for vector graphics". So anybody saying "we should use more vectors" has to remember what the state of open vector graphics standards is.
GoblinSlayer 13d ago
In the context of the world it's all hair splitting, you can have a big photographic picture in png, or 1% compressed jpeg, or 1% jpeg converted to png. No new format can change it.

karim79 13d ago

Agreed. JPG is the most popular format for photography. PNG, the lossless format is great for diagrams and stuff with sharp edges. It can be "compressed" via dithering and quantization. GIF is there... because it will always be there because it's just a hit that will never go away. It's also lossless (when discounting colour depth). The new formats are interesting webp, avif, JXL and so on. Jpeg classic is the clear winner IMHO and will probably never be less relevant than the new fancier formats. JPG even does text and sharp edges, reds, and so on well if you tell your process to take into account chroma subsampling! It's magic and it puts food on my table.

Gigachad 13d ago
Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 video with no sound. Modern video formats are so much better that they are a no brainer to use while the word gif just got used to refer to looping video without sound rater than the literal gif image format.
- karim79 13d ago
  Precisely. Kind of reminds me of "Hoover" or "Kleenex". Coca cola even. It has brand equity which means it's not going away any time soon.
- vohk 13d ago
  Reminds me of when Imgur started trying to push changing gifs over to gifv, which were just mp4 with a strange new file extension. I didn't like their approach but it really was such an improvement on file size and quality.
- bawolff 13d ago
  Not to mention if you for some odd reason wanted to do gif-style animations, you can also do it with apng or webp. You shouldn't, real video format makes more sense, but even if you did there is still no reason to use gif.
  - mitxela 13d ago
    Browsers only supported animated gif, not any other animated format
    - miladyincontrol 13d ago
      What do you mean? Most browsers support animated jpeg xl, avif, webp and apng just fine.
      - madwolf 13d ago
        Perhaps the clue is in the past tense "supported". Nowadays browsers support many formats, but in the "olden days" gif was the only way to get animations in browsers without plugins like Macromedia Flash...
        deleted 13d ago
        [deleted]
        bawolff 13d ago
        Support was added a decade ago (chrome 59 (2017), firefox 3 (2008)), so you have to go back quite a while.
    - out_of_protocol 13d ago
      also, don't forget - actual video format is better for animated stuff. Current default approach is .webm which is standardized .mkv container + vp9 (or av1) video + opus audio (usually no audio to as a feature parity to gif). IMO animated picture formats like .avifs are very backwards and don't add much
- hulitu 13d ago
  > Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 video with no sound. Then, long live the iMessage and Whatsup exploits, because SW developers are not able to do things right.
- ButlerianJihad 13d ago
  I began a dispute on the English Wikipedia which revealed that more than a few people use “GIF” to describe, not a file format, but a visual style of looping animation.
- account42 13d ago
  The major blunder here is browsers refusing to support silent videos in <img> tags etc. so we end up with all these hacks. Instead we got animated webp that you can't use for progressive enhancement because it doesn't have its own mime type and browsers reported support for image/webp before implementing animation support. And webp is also very limited when it comes to inter-frame compression for no good reason at all.
  - tjoff 13d ago
    Gif doesn't mean "no sound" anymore. Gif is more or less "short video", which broke a lot of assumptions at first but we have pretty much passed that transition and it makes sense for what they are used for today. That ship has sailed.
    - Gigachad 13d ago
      Gif certainly does mean no sound. Look at discord, telegram or literally any app that says “gif” and it’s no sound video.
      - tjoff 12d ago
        Those are messaging/communication apps,sound in those apps can be quite disruptive so that doesn't surprise me at all. It has nothing to do with the original gif, it is just that gif is now synonymous with short clip (with or without sound) and sound in that context is disruptive. Go to google.com, search for images and select image type gif and you will get mp4s with sound.
      - duskwuff 12d ago
        Telegram's usage of "GIF" (any short video without sound) is incredibly weird and frequently goes against users' expectations. I wouldn't treat that as definitive.
    - zbentley 13d ago
      I ... what? I've never heard anyone conflate the two--not teenagers, non-technical adults, or software people. Most folks know that "GIF" means "moving image that can be easily shared but has no sound and usually crap quality", not a video/audio clip.
- kps 13d ago
  I am sure that none of the `.gif` files on my computer have been silently replaced. And there absolutely are cases where a lossless GIF is smaller than a lossy video format.
frej 13d ago
Jpg, does not do text well, at its regular file size.And somewhat related it has no alpha channel.
- lgkrnkglwn 13d ago
  JNG (jpeg network graphics) is essentially jpeg that support alpha channel.
  - quikee 11d ago
    But supported by no browser today and software support in general is quite limited. If the PNG authors would just incorporate this possibility into PNG from start it would be interesting, but it's too late now.
mikae1 13d ago
> PNG, the lossless format is great for diagrams and stuff with sharp edges. But also, like GIF, it's pointless when lossless WebP exists and is supported everywhere. It's more efficient. Lossy WebP does not make as much sense though since jpegli entered the game. OP has made https://halide.cx/iris/ https://halide.cx/iris/ which could make lossy WebP make sense, but it's not open source or generally available. > The new formats are interesting webp, avif, JXL and so on. WebP was introduced 15 years ago. New relative to JPEG perhaps, but certainly not new.
- nananana9 13d ago
  PNGs will persist because I know that they're lossless by looking at the filename. When I hit File > Save as .png, I don't have to inspect output metadata (that image viewers don't expose) or play around with exporter settings. It's unfortunate that we didn't give lossless webps a separate extension. Frankly I think even saving them as .png would've better than what we have now - people roughly understand that a .png is an image without artifacts, and any self-respecting image viewer will inspect magic bytes before opening a file anyways.
  - edflsafoiewq 13d ago
    Being lossless is a function of the whole pipeline from an input image to an output image. The last step being encode to PNG doesn't guarantee anything about losslessness.
    - xigoi 13d ago
      Lossless means that the file encodes the exact same information that was given to the encoder. This is a property of the format.
      - ZeroGravitas 13d ago
        Yes but people add pre-preprocessor steps to image formats, like blurring jpegs or lowering bit depth in PNGs to make them more compressible.
lgkrnkglwn 13d ago
Jpeg LS do support lossless images.
- quikee 11d ago
  But this is quite a different format than JPEG or better said the subset of JPEG that we know today as JPEG format and the JPEG encoder/decoders support. The whole JPEG format did have support for a lossless mode for JPEG (different one than JPEG LS), arithmetic coding and 12-bit images too, but those features just didn't make it into the implementations of the format (arithmetic coding initially did, but was removed from popular implementations because of patents).
mitxela 13d ago
PNG was once (win98 era) the sparkling new format that nothing supported yet. Operating systems shouldn't waste their time supporting it.
- fingerlocks 13d ago
  Png is still being updated, just last year it was updated to support a wider color space than any other web format. This shipped in all browsers before the official spec was publicly so you’ve been seeing Png upgrades without even realizing it
mschuetz 13d ago
Gif is still there because it's still often the only option for frictionless video embedding. Embedded videos usually come with a video player that hardly ever quite works out well, often not starting automatically, not looping, or showing video player UI elementa that shouldnt be shown.

dada78641 13d ago

"These should just be vector images instead" is an argument made by someone who has never in their life attempted to create a vector image.

Pxtl 13d ago
Also it would be nice to have a good standard vector format that isn't the complete kitchen-sink that is SVG, but we don't have that. We needed "jpeg but for vector graphics" and instead we got "html but for vector graphics". So anybody saying "we should use more vectors" has to remember what the state of open vector graphics standards is.

GoblinSlayer 13d ago

In the context of the world it's all hair splitting, you can have a big photographic picture in png, or 1% compressed jpeg, or 1% jpeg converted to png. No new format can change it.