this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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whats wrong with it
Try linking one and sending it to someone else. I tried it and the recipient died two days later.
That's weird, doesn't it usually take seven?
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/thering/images/1/1e/Samara_Morgan.v1.webp/revision/latest?cb=20221030003832
jokes aside what is bad with it
There's some politics involved. Basically, everyone is rallying behind JPEGXL instead of WebP, but Google refuses to support JPEGXL in Chrome. The reasoning they gave is weak, so it's assumed that they're just trying to force the format they invented on everyone because they can.
IIRC, performance of the two formats is similar.
"everyone"
why does everyone like jpegxl and why does google care if it's foss
JPEG XL, like AVIF and HEIC and WebP, is basically a next generation format that supports much higher quality at lower file sizes compared to JPEG and PNG.
Among those four formats, JPEG XL is promising because it allows for recompression of JPEG losslessly. That means if you take an image that was already encoded as JPEG (as the vast, vast majority of images are), you can recompress with no additional loss in quality from the conversion. That's something that isn't true of the others.
JPEG XL also has a much higher maximum quality and specific features great for high quality image workflows (like for professional photographers, publishers, and those who need to print images). WebP, AVIF, and HEIC are good for sharing on the web, but the printing and publishing workflow support requires a few more conversions along the way.
I thought this blog post by a cloud image delivery network that played a big role in developing JPEG XL was pretty persuasive, even if they had a direct interest in JPEG XL adoption.
But aren’t jpegxl and webp meant for completely different uses? Like jpeg and png are. Jpeg is better for photos and png for graphics.
Also using “XL” in a name for an encoding which does better compression was not the smartest idea, that will surely confuse many users.
No. JPEG XL is designed to be better at pretty much everything than webp (which was just adapted from a video format that was designed to be really efficient at video but without touching any patents). JPEG is best at photographs at screen resolutions, and PNG is best for screenshots of computer interfaces with lots of repeated colors, and DNG/TIFF are great for high resolution and bit depth (like for professional printing and publishing, or raw image capture from the camera). JPEG XL does a good job at all of those.
Thank you. It would be nice with one format to replace them all.
Exactly why WebP is shit, and Google literally owning everything shouldn't be normalized.
It’s a format that most major image editors don’t support. Basically, if you wanted to do anything with it, you need to first convert it to a different format. It’s the only format that has this problem.
That's fair except it's not the only format that has this problem. There's JPEG 2000 and AVIF which have even less image editor support.
I had meant to say common format. I’ve never encountered a JPEG 2000.
I’m old enough to remember when the same argument was made for PNG files. It’s a stupid argument.
WEBP is 13 years old at this point and lacks the support that PNG had 3 years into its lifetime. The benefits are marginal, and without platform support it can’t catch on. Do your research before calling someone else’s argument stupid.
I think most people dislike it because Google made it. Google is evil as fuck, but it's a damn good image format, obviously so since it's way smaller for the same visuals compared to the older formats, plus it supports transparency. Google is evil but still makes good software sometimes.