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If JPEG XL doesn’t become useful on the web, is it really likely to become popular with camera manufacturers, professional image editing tools, etc? What does

If JPEG XL doesn’t become useful on the web, is it really likely to become popular with camera manufacturers, professional image editing tools, etc? What does it offer there that existing workflows can’t support? Do those advantages make up for the transcoding that every web publisher would need to do to make the outputs useful on the web?

dannyw 18d ago
I’ve been shooting with semipro to pro cameras for decades across brands, and I haven’t came across a single camera that supports shooting JPEG XL. HEIF is what is getting support in recent models; but JPEG still rules supreme for its compatibility.
computerbuster 18d ago
Web publishers should definitely be stripping metadata at least, and transcoding isn't much harder. For anyone who cares about bandwidth, transcoding to efficient formats is non-negotiable; if you don't, then why do anything? Just ship PNG, who cares? I think one of the compelling use cases for camera manufacturers would be an interoperable format for editors. Since JXL has support for so many channels, you could load your image into an editor, edit it, add layers, etc., and export as JXL, which could be used for other things.
- kps 17d ago
  > Web publishers should definitely be stripping metadata at least No, they shouldn't. Not blindly. Metadata can include copyright license information, such that stripping it violates the license to reproduce the image.
pwg 18d ago
> If JPEG XL doesn’t become useful on the web, is it really likely to become popular with camera manufacturers, professional image editing tools, etc? I suspect that eventually, the browser makers that are reluctant to add JpegXL support will do so, even if reluctantly, and so it will eventually "become useful on the web". The reason why is Adobe added JpegXL as a compression format for PDF's, and as every browser maker wants their browser to also be a "PDF viewer", this means they must include a JpegXL decoder to be able to support PDF's going forward. If they must have a JpegXL decoder anyway, it is not that difficult to also add it as another supported format for the <img> tag.
- computerbuster 18d ago
  Looking forward to a future where we can arbitrarily DoS anyone with a PDF that computes massive swaths of prime numbers.
  - eviks 18d ago
    Can't that future adopt basic resource / complexity limits to defuse the DOS bomb?
  - eru 18d ago
    PDFs can already do arbitrary computation. You can even play tetris in them.
  - fc417fc802 18d ago
    You used to be able to DoS the user's browser by sticking thousands of tiny animated gifs on the same page. You can't do that any more (AFAIK) because that's a bug so the browser developers fixed it. This is the same thing. It's odd that apple didn't proactively guard against such concerns when adding a new format.
Gigachad 18d ago
Most people using dedicated cameras shoot in RAW, then use a program to process and export the photos afterwards. So camera manufacturer buy-in isn't super important. I've been exporting in JXL from Lightroom for a little while now, you get slightly smaller image sizes and HDR with no real downsides. On the web I imagine this will translate to higher quality images on social media since platforms can get more out of the same file size. It will also likely be the end of HEIF which is a pain to deal with due to patents.
- erk__ 18d ago
  DNG added JPEG-XL as a format for both raw and compressed recently
  - Gigachad 18d ago
    The iPhone actually uses JPEG xl for its DNG raw files now.
- joeblubaugh 18d ago
  The second paragraph doesn’t follow from my question, because it assumes JPEG XL does become useful on the web. The author believes AVIF is too far ahead already.
  - rmunn 18d ago
    I suspect the name alone will help drive adoption, especially from non-technical people. Heck, I'm reasonably technical myself (but not expert in image formats) and my first instinct on encountering AVIF was to say "AVIF? Does that stand for AVI File?" And I would have assumed that it's a video format, not an image format. Whereas JPEG XL would have everyone who has ever used a digital camera saying "Ah, it's got JPEG in the name, that means it's a photo format". Never underestimate the power of a well-known brand name in communicating things to people who know nothing else about the subject. The name is a big part of why I suspect JPEG XL will take off in popularity. (The lossless conversion to and from classic JPEG format is the other main reason).
ErneX 18d ago
iPhones have been using it for its ProRAW format since 2024. It has 3 options: JPEG Lossless (most compatible) JPEG-XL Losless JPEG-XL Lossy

dannyw 18d ago

I’ve been shooting with semipro to pro cameras for decades across brands, and I haven’t came across a single camera that supports shooting JPEG XL. HEIF is what is getting support in recent models; but JPEG still rules supreme for its compatibility.

computerbuster 18d ago

Web publishers should definitely be stripping metadata at least, and transcoding isn't much harder. For anyone who cares about bandwidth, transcoding to efficient formats is non-negotiable; if you don't, then why do anything? Just ship PNG, who cares? I think one of the compelling use cases for camera manufacturers would be an interoperable format for editors. Since JXL has support for so many channels, you could load your image into an editor, edit it, add layers, etc., and export as JXL, which could be used for other things.

kps 17d ago
> Web publishers should definitely be stripping metadata at least No, they shouldn't. Not blindly. Metadata can include copyright license information, such that stripping it violates the license to reproduce the image.

pwg 18d ago

> If JPEG XL doesn’t become useful on the web, is it really likely to become popular with camera manufacturers, professional image editing tools, etc? I suspect that eventually, the browser makers that are reluctant to add JpegXL support will do so, even if reluctantly, and so it will eventually "become useful on the web". The reason why is Adobe added JpegXL as a compression format for PDF's, and as every browser maker wants their browser to also be a "PDF viewer", this means they must include a JpegXL decoder to be able to support PDF's going forward. If they must have a JpegXL decoder anyway, it is not that difficult to also add it as another supported format for the <img> tag.

computerbuster 18d ago
Looking forward to a future where we can arbitrarily DoS anyone with a PDF that computes massive swaths of prime numbers.
- eviks 18d ago
  Can't that future adopt basic resource / complexity limits to defuse the DOS bomb?
- eru 18d ago
  PDFs can already do arbitrary computation. You can even play tetris in them.
- fc417fc802 18d ago
  You used to be able to DoS the user's browser by sticking thousands of tiny animated gifs on the same page. You can't do that any more (AFAIK) because that's a bug so the browser developers fixed it. This is the same thing. It's odd that apple didn't proactively guard against such concerns when adding a new format.

Gigachad 18d ago

Most people using dedicated cameras shoot in RAW, then use a program to process and export the photos afterwards. So camera manufacturer buy-in isn't super important. I've been exporting in JXL from Lightroom for a little while now, you get slightly smaller image sizes and HDR with no real downsides. On the web I imagine this will translate to higher quality images on social media since platforms can get more out of the same file size. It will also likely be the end of HEIF which is a pain to deal with due to patents.

erk__ 18d ago
DNG added JPEG-XL as a format for both raw and compressed recently
- Gigachad 18d ago
  The iPhone actually uses JPEG xl for its DNG raw files now.
joeblubaugh 18d ago
The second paragraph doesn’t follow from my question, because it assumes JPEG XL does become useful on the web. The author believes AVIF is too far ahead already.
- rmunn 18d ago
  I suspect the name alone will help drive adoption, especially from non-technical people. Heck, I'm reasonably technical myself (but not expert in image formats) and my first instinct on encountering AVIF was to say "AVIF? Does that stand for AVI File?" And I would have assumed that it's a video format, not an image format. Whereas JPEG XL would have everyone who has ever used a digital camera saying "Ah, it's got JPEG in the name, that means it's a photo format". Never underestimate the power of a well-known brand name in communicating things to people who know nothing else about the subject. The name is a big part of why I suspect JPEG XL will take off in popularity. (The lossless conversion to and from classic JPEG format is the other main reason).

ErneX 18d ago

iPhones have been using it for its ProRAW format since 2024. It has 3 options: JPEG Lossless (most compatible) JPEG-XL Losless JPEG-XL Lossy