Google Outlines Why They Are Removing JPEG-XL Support From Chrome

[Artim]

This looks like a naturalistic fallacy. Why would HDR not make sense for the web?

Because all content is in SDR. Sure, iOS and Android are capable to correctly show both HDR and SDR content next to each other (for all I know), but I have no idea how good these implementations are on every other OS, let alone browsers. The situation on Linux definitely still needs quite some improvement. It doesn't make sense arguing for formats with better support for HDR when it can't be displayed correctly. And no, just converting to SDR isn't really a solution since color science is very complex. When software has proven to do those conversions to a satisfactory point, sure go ahead. But before that it doesn't make sense to hope for more use of it, when there actually isn't that much use outside of professional fields to start with. Sure, in movies it makes a lot of sense since they are usually made for cinemas and it can be very challenging to bring them to TVs otherwise. But in photos? I'm not so sure

[grok]

Well, webp is supported in every browser and not "hidden", it just works.
It is also supported in LibreOffice, Gimp 2.99, content management systems, wiki engines, and so on.

Any other format would have to be significantly better than webp, not just better than the old JPG. I have used webp for some years now, both the compressed and the lossless version, and I really don't miss anything. Nor do I miss just another format like jpeg xl.

And software support is a topic, there's discussion about hardware but e.g. an Ubuntu LTS user needs to wait for Ubuntu 24.04 to use webp in documents, as a wallpaper or even in the picture gallery, etc. Worse, many users will skip that LTS and update to 26.04.x when they feel like it.
And there is Android 8, TVs, ipads. I'm not mad at it but this will take a long while.

[grok]

Well I can confirm that Brave decodes AVIF much, much more quickly than JPEG XL. The test image used was test.png.

ffmpeg -i test.png -crf 0 -row-mt 1 -tile-columns 2 -tile-rows 2 test.avif

cjxl -q 100 test.png test.jxl

Unfortunately, JPEG XL has superior file sizing when maintaining lossless:

test.png: 8.5 MB
test.avif: 7.8 MB
test.jxl: 6.0 MB

I have verified that AVIF and JPEG XL were lossless here because converting them both to BMP produces files with identical hashes.

Now does any of the formats have (optional) file extensions to know which kind of file you're getting? because that's three, lossy, lossless and animated. Four with animated lossless if there's that.

[grok]

Because the use of HDR in pictures is so common, especially on the web or what? The discussion here isn't really about what format professionals should use, but what makes sense for the web.

I'm mostly with you but if HDR pictures are good or useful they should be available on the web. There is webcam support on the web, and some other less useful things. Although this puts a stupid and annoying divide between users and even among HDR users that have "wrong"/"bad" or "right"/"good" HDR.

Posts were all "Why bother with that? No one can afford the hardware and only three games support it." and now you can buy television sets with Adaptive Sync. HDR is the same way. Within the next 3-5 years nearly everything will be at least HDR10.

There will be people with HDR everything and people with HDR nothing. Even Apple users buying a non "pro" laptop or the 5K non HDR display while iphone and macbook pro are HDR. So I might be wrong when predicting but I'm pretty sure people will be stuck to non-HDR or low end HDR monitor in non-HDR mode for many years.
*But* it probably makes sense to look at pretty things on a HDR TV

[SciK]

Because the use of HDR in pictures is so common, especially on the web or what? The discussion here isn't really about what format professionals should use, but what makes sense for the web.

This looks like a naturalistic fallacy. Why would HDR not make sense for the web?

[Artim]

That's why we're all very pissed off about JPEG-XL in Chrome. JPEG-XL makes the most sense for both professionals and the web. You can encapsulate multibracketed HDR shots with it, you can losslessly recompress all your existing RAW and JPEGs, you can store multiple zoom levels in it, it's progressive so it's better with lower bandwidth internet connections. Those last two are very important for the internet since they allow low-bandwidth connections to view acceptable images faster and allow providers/content hosters to recompress all of their JPEGs to free up a lot of space (more so than with WebP or AVIF).

Not only is it better with the current status quo, it's future forward with everything that it offers. Its lossless mode even has the potential to replace RAW.

You might be rolling your eyes about HDR now, but its no different than everyone rolling their eyes about Adaptive Sync (G/Freesync) 10 years ago. Posts were all "Why bother with that? No one can afford the hardware and only three games support it." and now you can buy television sets with Adaptive Sync. HDR is the same way. Within the next 3-5 years nearly everything will be at least HDR10.

Like I already said, you really can't tell anybody that you actually believe that if JPEG-XL really was as great as you would like people to believe that Google wouldn't have been the first one to fully implement it. They don't give a rats ass about their own creations when the interest is too low. And if JPEG-XL really was long-term royalty-free and was actually such a massive improvement over anything else, Google Photos would definitely be using it as one of the first services. After all, who wouldn't take the opportunity to massively save storage with pretty much no work. But as you can see, Googles interest is pretty much non-existent. So reality can't be as good as you describe. After all, like every company Google is mainly driven by profit and saving lots of storage and bandwidth with no drawbacks would be a huge profit.

[skeevy420]

Because the use of HDR in pictures is so common, especially on the web or what? The discussion here isn't really about what format professionals should use, but what makes sense for the web.

That's why we're all very pissed off about JPEG-XL in Chrome. JPEG-XL makes the most sense for both professionals and the web. You can encapsulate multibracketed HDR shots with it, you can losslessly recompress all your existing RAW and JPEGs, you can store multiple zoom levels in it, it's progressive so it's better with lower bandwidth internet connections. Those last two are very important for the internet since they allow low-bandwidth connections to view acceptable images faster and allow providers/content hosters to recompress all of their JPEGs to free up a lot of space (more so than with WebP or AVIF).

Not only is it better with the current status quo, it's future forward with everything that it offers. Its lossless mode even has the potential to replace RAW.

You might be rolling your eyes about HDR now, but its no different than everyone rolling their eyes about Adaptive Sync (G/Freesync) 10 years ago. Posts were all "Why bother with that? No one can afford the hardware and only three games support it." and now you can buy television sets with Adaptive Sync. HDR is the same way. Within the next 3-5 years nearly everything will be at least HDR10.

[Artim]

No satisfactory HDR support in WebP.

Because the use of HDR in pictures is so common, especially on the web or what? The discussion here isn't really about what format professionals should use, but what makes sense for the web.

[SciK]

Well, webp is supported in every browser and not "hidden", it just works.
It is also supported in LibreOffice, Gimp 2.99, content management systems, wiki engines, and so on.

Any other format would have to be significantly better than webp, not just better than the old JPG. I have used webp for some years now, both the compressed and the lossless version, and I really don't miss anything. Nor do I miss just another format like jpeg xl.

No satisfactory HDR support in WebP.

[pepoluan]

Well, webp is supported in every browser and not "hidden", it just works.
It is also supported in LibreOffice, Gimp 2.99, content management systems, wiki engines, and so on.

Any other format would have to be significantly better than webp, not just better than the old JPG. I have used webp for some years now, both the compressed and the lossless version, and I really don't miss anything. Nor do I miss just another format like jpeg xl.

Agree.

For me WebP is Good Enough. Alpha channel + good compression for pictures/photos = best of PNG and JPEG.

Sure, I do miss JPEG Progressive, but that's not enough of a killer feature for my use case.