PNG format images

Sensual Art said

waist.it I love the irony that it's not supported in Chromium, despite Google's support! And as to why its been in the Nightly builds of Firefox for 3 years but never been made mainstream...!

Various opinions abound regarding this. These two threads are quite interesting...

• https://www.reddit.com/r/jpegxl/comments/174d1xx/jpegxl_is_actually_insanely_good_already_why_is/
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1539075

My own take is there are several factors at play...

1. JPEG XL it's a relatively new format that was only formalised a couple of years back. It took ten years before WEBP really gained any traction.
2. There are already three formats that claim to be replacements for the old JPEG standard: AVIF, HEIF and WEBP that have had to be supported. There seems to be a sense amongst browser developers of "Oh hell, not another one..."
3. For most people's purposes the old JPEG is still good enough anyway.
4. There are a lot of technical issues relating to adopting a new and complex standard that extend far beyond just being able to see an image in that format.

It's also worth noting that in addition to "penguinistas" in the open source community, big commercial players such as Apple and Adobe seem to have adopted the JXL standard too, with Apple's Safari being the first mainstream browser to support it. It also seems fairly well supported Apple's iOS v17 - though I am not a regular Apple user and have no first hand experience of this.

• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/jpegxl-looks-pretty-good-on-ios-ipados-17.2403497/

-sp●●n- said

The Portrait Cowboy said

Does the .jxl file format also support image transparency?

Yes, and animation.

Thanks.

Well then hopefully this format can gain mainstream traction as inconsistency across the internet is just getting silly.

waist.it said

My own take is there are several factors at play...

1. JPEG XL it's a relatively new format that was only formalised a couple of years back. It took ten years before WEBP really gained any traction.
2. There are already three formats that claim to be replacements for the old JPEG standard: AVIF, HEIF and WEBP that have had to be supported. There seems to be a sense amongst browser developers of "Oh hell, not another one..."
3. For most people's purposes the old JPEG is still good enough anyway.
4. There are a lot of technical issues relating to adopting a new and complex standard that extend far beyond just being able to see an image in that format.

I suspect that (3) is the most important, it's VHS vs Betamax all over again.

Gothic Image said

waist.it said

My own take is there are several factors at play...

1. JPEG XL it's a relatively new format that was only formalised a couple of years back. It took ten years before WEBP really gained any traction.
2. There are already three formats that claim to be replacements for the old JPEG standard: AVIF, HEIF and WEBP that have had to be supported. There seems to be a sense amongst browser developers of "Oh hell, not another one..."
3. For most people's purposes the old JPEG is still good enough anyway.
4. There are a lot of technical issues relating to adopting a new and complex standard that extend far beyond just being able to see an image in that format.

I suspect that (3) is the most important, it's VHS vs Betamax all over again.

There certainly is a significant element of that lol! :-)

However there is a significant difference too. In the days of Betamax vs VHS, the consumer would have a capital investment in specific hardware for one or the other of the media formats. You needed a VHS player to play a VHS tape. Whereas a software "player" such as a browser can handle multiple software formats simultaneously. Handling JXL does not preclude a browser from also "playing" AFIF HEIF or WEBP.

What I can't find anywhere is whether JXL is still only 8-bit. I'm thinking of the previous discussion here on "high resolution" images which actually meant a greater bit depth.

Gothic Image said

What I can't find anywhere is whether JXL is still only 8-bit. I'm thinking of the previous discussion here on "high resolution" images which actually meant a greater bit depth.

Up to 32-bit colour depth.

Gothic Image said

What I can't find anywhere is whether JXL is still only 8-bit. I'm thinking of the previous discussion here on "high resolution" images which actually meant a greater bit depth.

https://www.jpegxl.io/faq#hdr

JPEG XL is intended to be a format that offers high fidelity and a small file size. Therefore, it can support many high-quality applications, including wide gamut / HDR, visually lossy 4:4:4 up to 32 bits of depth, dynamic range, and generation loss resilience.

✔ Lossless up to 32 bits per channel (float or int)

✔ Compatible with HDR & wide gamut

✔ Not for end-user image delivery but also authoring workflows

waist.it said

Sensual Art said

waist.it I love the irony that it's not supported in Chromium, despite Google's support! And as to why its been in the Nightly builds of Firefox for 3 years but never been made mainstream...!

Various opinions abound regarding this. These two threads are quite interesting...

• https://www.reddit.com/r/jpegxl/comments/174d1xx/jpegxl_is_actually_insanely_good_already_why_is/
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1539075

My own take is there are several factors at play...

1. JPEG XL it's a relatively new format that was only formalised a couple of years back. It took ten years before WEBP really gained any traction.
2. There are already three formats that claim to be replacements for the old JPEG standard: AVIF, HEIF and WEBP that have had to be supported. There seems to be a sense amongst browser developers of "Oh hell, not another one..."
3. For most people's purposes the old JPEG is still good enough anyway.
4. There are a lot of technical issues relating to adopting a new and complex standard that extend far beyond just being able to see an image in that format.

It's also worth noting that in addition to "penguinistas" in the open source community, big commercial players such as Apple and Adobe seem to have adopted the JXL standard too, with Apple's Safari being the first mainstream browser to support it. It also seems fairly well supported Apple's iOS v17 - though I am not a regular Apple user and have no first hand experience of this.

• https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/jpegxl-looks-pretty-good-on-ios-ipados-17.2403497/

What is interesting is Apple are HEIF/HEIC on the images internally on their iPhones, wonder if they will switch at some point. HEIC/HEIV are closely tied and patent encumbered which will stop that being a standard on the web.

Gothic Image said

waist.it said

My own take is there are several factors at play...

1. JPEG XL it's a relatively new format that was only formalised a couple of years back. It took ten years before WEBP really gained any traction.
2. There are already three formats that claim to be replacements for the old JPEG standard: AVIF, HEIF and WEBP that have had to be supported. There seems to be a sense amongst browser developers of "Oh hell, not another one..."
3. For most people's purposes the old JPEG is still good enough anyway.
4. There are a lot of technical issues relating to adopting a new and complex standard that extend far beyond just being able to see an image in that format.

I suspect that (3) is the most important, it's VHS vs Betamax all over again.

Good enough, established things tend to keep out new things. 

The more established (not to say entrenched) the incumbent technology is, the bigger the advantage new tech needs. With a new picture format will I see a difference ? Will my downloads be noticeably faster? Will I be able to buy my next computer with a smaller drive? If the answer to all those is no, where's the huge advantage needed to displace JPEG.

DVDs killed pre-recorded VHS, and streaming has pretty much killed DVDs. The lifespan of the DVD was less than that of JPEG.

I have some 25 year old software which reads and writes JPG and PNG files (I still use it because is convenient and it's a nice check for compatibility), so they are old formats, but pretty entrenched.  

-sp●●n- said

Gothic Image said

What I can't find anywhere is whether JXL is still only 8-bit. I'm thinking of the previous discussion here on "high resolution" images which actually meant a greater bit depth.

https://www.jpegxl.io/faq#hdr

JPEG XL is intended to be a format that offers high fidelity and a small file size. Therefore, it can support many high-quality applications, including wide gamut / HDR, visually lossy 4:4:4 up to 32 bits of depth, dynamic range, and generation loss resilience.

✔ Lossless up to 32 bits per channel (float or int)

✔ Compatible with HDR & wide gamut

✔ Not for end-user image delivery but also authoring workflows

Thanks for that - I found a couple of white paper but they weren't very helpful.

All this discussion about other image formats is all very interesting, but woefully off-topic given that the initial post was asking that we get support for adding PNG images here on PP, something for which there is widespread software support already, but which PP does not allow, even though it claims to.

Sensual Art said

All this discussion about other image formats is all very interesting, but woefully off-topic given that the initial post was asking that we get support for adding PNG images here on PP, something for which there is widespread software support already, but which PP does not allow, even though it claims to.

I was one of those largely responsible for knocking it off topic - for which I apologise. Yes I agree, better support for both PNG and WEBP formats on PP would be a very good development, IMHO. Granted, one can actually post both formats in the fora, unaltered, providing they are hosted on another server. But it would be good if we could upload them to PP too, without them becoming corrupted.

I'm struggling to see any benefits to using PNG.

Transparency is a red herring since if you want an image to appear as though it is transparent, then use the PP background colour instead of transparency. Plus, anyone with any experience in making websites knows the often unsatisfactory outcomes when a carefully designed transparent image is displayed on a different background, e.g., dark mode or, heaven forbid, a texture. 

The lossless nature of PNG is also a red herring since if you want lossless JPG you only need save it to the quality you want, and upload it to PP at such a size that PP does nothing to it e.g. 1080px across.

Russ Freeman said

I'm struggling to see any benefits to using PNG.

Transparency is a red herring since if you want an image to appear as though it is transparent, then use the PP background colour instead of transparency. Plus, anyone with any experience in making websites knows the often unsatisfactory outcomes when a carefully designed transparent image is displayed on a different background, e.g., dark mode or, heaven forbid, a texture. 

The lossless nature of PNG is also a red herring since if you want lossless JPG you only need save it to the quality you want, and upload it to PP at such a size that PP does nothing to it e.g. 1080px across.

Fair point about transparencies. In any event, for me personally, WEBP would be more useful then PNG. WEBP more efficient than JPEG for any given level of detail and its very well suited for short animations...

But I appreciate it's your bat & ball and all that... :-)

Russ Freeman said

I'm struggling to see any benefits to using PNG.

Transparency is a red herring since if you want an image to appear as though it is transparent, then use the PP background colour instead of transparency. Plus, anyone with any experience in making websites knows the often unsatisfactory outcomes when a carefully designed transparent image is displayed on a different background, e.g., dark mode or, heaven forbid, a texture. 

Transparency is absolutely not a red herring, and ironically you have highlighted exactly why.

On my desktop, I use a browser set with a light theme, so the page background is white.  On my mobile, I use a browser with a dark theme plugin, so the page background is a darkish grey.  I can't "use the PP background colour", because it's not the same colour on the two devices, and I don't want to have some artificial "my background" colour either.  I want to have a triptych or other collage and use the browser's background between the separate parts.  See https://purpleport.com/group/games/196569/Show-your-images-with-non-rectangular-frames/ for just a few, where I've had to add my own background.  Or, of course, https://purpleport.com/group/games/195369/Share-your-Fisheye-shots-/ for some examples of circular images using fisheye lenses, where the picture ends up with a lots of black.

I want it to be my choice here.

And my initial point was that the site claims to allow PNGs, but then breaks them in an unpredictable way.