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Comment by yboris | Hacker News Reader

The future of images is JPEG XL - https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/

A great overview and explanation: https://cloudinary.com/blog/time_for_next_gen_codecs_to_deth...

I don't know, JPEG has the "problem" of being good enough for what it is used for. We could do better for decades but because everyone understands JPEG it is still the standard. And if JPEG doesn't fit, chances are that PNG does.

There are alternatives. Google optionally uses webp, because it saves them bandwidth and they control the entire chain. And specialized applications like maps sometimes use better suited formats, but if you want to share a picture, that's JPEG.

The same thing happens with audio. The go to format is still MP3 even though it is well outdated. In fact, we had what is close to the perfect lossy audio codec (Opus) since 2012 and support it is pretty much only used when you control the entire chain, like in video games.

So maybe JPEG XL is the perfect image format, but it is still a tough sell when you have something universal that is good enough against it.

The only way I can see it gain traction is if tech giants get together and force it on us. Like they have been doing for web standards. And if there are patents, even that may not work.

Video is different because it uses a huge amount of bandwidth and no formats are "good enough" yet.

JPEG XL's party trick is that you can losslessly (and reversibly) transcode regular JPEG images to XL images, at less CPU cost than fully decoding and then encoding, for a size savings of ~30%. I think this will be enough to put it over the top and drive adoption as CDNs will be able to transparently serve either JPEG or XL for a resource originally uploaded as a standard JPEG depending on whether the requesting user agent supports XL.

It is, but that's not relevant to what Carmack was talking about.

compared to JPEG2000 it feels like it is actually trying to offer an upgrade path

I mean the fact that JPEG has won out for so long suggests that it's anyone's guess what will replace it.

The great thing about XR is that ordinary JPEG images can be compressed with XR and receive a reduction in size without any reduction in visual quality. Once all your tools receive support for XR, you can convert your entire image library in one fell swoop with no fear.

If that isn't an upgrade path, I don't know what is.

You mean xl - xr is also a thing, but itself quite old by now, and not really likely to break through any more.

Ack, I do indeed. I blame the JPEG org for having such confusing names!

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