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Can A New Open Photo File Format Replace JPEGs? (cnet.com)
Got lossless compression? An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
Google, Mozilla and others in a group called the Alliance for Open Media are working on a rival photo technology. In testing so far, the images are 15 percent smaller than Apple's HEIC photo format, said Tim Terriberry, a Mozilla principal research engineer working on the project. But smaller sizes are just the beginning... it's got a strong list of allies, an affinity for web publishing and modern features that could make it the best contender yet for overcoming JPEG's 1990s-era shortcomings... JPEG isn't just limited by needlessly large file sizes. It's also weak when it comes to supporting a wider range of bright and dark tones, a broader spectrum of colors, and graphic elements like text and logos...
The HEIC's new rival is from the Alliance for Open Media, a group whose top priority is a video compression technology called AV1 that's free of patent licensing requirements. It's got heavy hitters on board, including top browser makers Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and the most recent new member, Apple -- though Apple's plans haven't been made public. And it's got major streaming-video companies, too: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Facebook, videoconferencing powerhouse Intel and Google's YouTube. And with the support of chip designers Intel, Nvidia and Arm, AV1 should get the hardware acceleration that's crucial to making video easy on our laptop and phone batteries.
To use Apple's HEIC, "makers of software, processors and phones must jump through a lot of hoops to license patents," which CNET predicts "means HEIC will have trouble succeeding on the web: patent barriers are antithetical to the web's open nature."
The HEIC's new rival is from the Alliance for Open Media, a group whose top priority is a video compression technology called AV1 that's free of patent licensing requirements. It's got heavy hitters on board, including top browser makers Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and the most recent new member, Apple -- though Apple's plans haven't been made public. And it's got major streaming-video companies, too: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Facebook, videoconferencing powerhouse Intel and Google's YouTube. And with the support of chip designers Intel, Nvidia and Arm, AV1 should get the hardware acceleration that's crucial to making video easy on our laptop and phone batteries.
To use Apple's HEIC, "makers of software, processors and phones must jump through a lot of hoops to license patents," which CNET predicts "means HEIC will have trouble succeeding on the web: patent barriers are antithetical to the web's open nature."
HEIF is not an Apple format. Apple only got involved with it years after it was standardized by MPEG in 2015.
24-bit PNGs are lossless, so if they incorporate photographic elements, the compression ratio is very bad.
An image format that balances lossy compression for photographic content but which can also efficiently handle graphic elements efficiently without major artifacts would be a good thing.
Graphic artist for 13 years here: FUCK JPEG.
The number of image formats documented for computer systems is pretty big playing field. Do we really need another one? Surely one of the already existing formats will suit the needs of every possible use case, already?
If compression is the goal, I have to question that goal.. is that really necessary? Our storage is getting bigger exponentially, our bandwidth between devices is growing just as fast, is better compression really needed?
And in an ironic twist of fate, 50MB animated GIFs replaced 1MB MP4s for short silent video clips.
#DeleteFacebook
JPEG was made for photography, therefore you have no business using it for graphic design. If you do use it, it tells me you are incompetent.
But you, in all your intellectual superiority, don't have the reading comprehension to grasp the (very valid) point he just made about the real world that handles your output for things like printing. NOBODY CARES what file format you work in, archive in, render from or anything else. What matters is what you can transport to the end user or print shop in real life. Which, if you were competent yourself, you'd know.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How can the parties participating in AOMedia be sure that no non-participating party holds essential patents that cover AV1?
How can any parties participating in any format development be sure that no non-participating party holds essential patents that cover their new format? It's a pointless argument.
AOMedia is going out of its way to avoid patent problems. That's the best anyone can ever do.
Sorry, but Adobe is the one that does the fucking in that relationship. The world's artists collectively decided that nothing Adobe does can ever drive them from Photoshop, so every month, bend over, pants down...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I put my images on a temporary web page, had the Internet Archive index the page, and then deleted it.
The need for "lossy compression for photographic content" belongs to the time when 640 K was more RAM than anyone would ever need and a modem faster than 2400 baud was too fast for even the best speed reader. Back when the big argument was how to best partition that 40 MB hard disk: 32/8 to get the biggest possible C: drive? 20/20 so C: and D: were equal size? Or the common compromise: 30 and 10?
PNG does not compress as well as JPG, but the difference between a display latency of 32 microseconds and one of 53 microseconds is meaningless when eyeball latency is measured in milliseconds. The number of users whose internet connection is so slow that they would notice the difference between JPG and PNG is a vanishing quantity, and those stuck in the slowest of the slow lanes are undoubtedly experiencing other problems with unwanted pop-up ads and gawdawefool redundancies in posts from people who don't know how to unnecessary repetitions of old news.
I'm sure there is at least one good argument for replacing JPG with a brand new format; I'm certain that there is some edge case out there where PNG would not serve well. But I cannot think of it.
oh wait: Mars to Earth true color 4 K images of alien sand. Maybe, that would be a use case. Maybe.
PNG does not compress as well as JPG, but the difference between a display latency of 32 microseconds and one of 53 microseconds is meaningless when eyeball latency is measured in milliseconds
Microseconds? You're off by a factor of 1000.
I took a 1024x640 TIFF photograph I had laying around and converted it to a 50KB jpg with moderate compression and a 500KB PNG and uploaded them to a well connected web server (10Gbit interface to the internet)
Then loaded them both in my home computer's browser. The jpg file took 86msec (that's milliseconds, not microseconds) to load, and the PNG file took 796msec (average of 5 tries). My home internet connection is 100mbit, pretty decent by American standards, if not by world standards.
I don't know about you, but I can definitely notice the difference between 800 msec and 80 msec.
nobody fucking cares if you have 'truer hues' or some other bullshit in your app or web site images. 99% won't even care, or even notice, if you use a higher compression on jpg.. digital tv (especially cable and satellite) is full of compression artifacts and those same people don't see it there either.
Correction: YOU don't see the artifacts & aren't bothered by them. Quite a few programmers do, and find them to be highly objectionable. Ergo, programmers are most highly-motivated to solve problems that annoy programmers, even if "normal people" don't care.
Specific example: telecine judder. "Normal" people see it & think "film look". Programmers see it & think, "how can I change the native framerate to an integer multiple of 24 to match, and/or algorithmically-tween additional synthetic frames to make the motion smoother?"