Posts by Jon Sneyers

The new DNG 1.7 specification allows using JPEG XL as the payload codec to store the raw camera data. This new option became available in flagship phone models like the iPhone 16 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S24. It brings a much-needed update to the existing compression method that…

Version 0.10 of libjxl, the reference implementation for JPEG XL, has just been released. The main improvement this version brings, is that the so-called “streaming encoding” API has now been fully implemented. This API allows encoding a large image in “chunks.” Instead of processing the entire image at once,…

Last month at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced its support of JPEG XL. As someone who helped create JPEG XL, I don’t think anyone was more pleased than me to hear this news. For a standard that’s not even three years old, this was a major win. Or…

Recently, the AVIF team at Google provided a comprehensive comparison of the performance of AVIF, JPEG XL, WebP, and JPEG. Comparing lossy image codecs is not easy, and there are many aspects to take into account. One key point to note in…

Recently, the Chrome developers announced their decision to remove the behind-a-flag support for JPEG XL. The following reasons are cited for this decision: Experimental flags and code should not remain indefinitely There is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG XL…

I can be quite passionate about image codecs. A “codec battle” is brewing, and I’m not the only one to have opinions about that. Obviously, as the chair of the JPEG XL ad hoc group in the JPEG Committee, I’m firmly in the camp of the codec I’ve been…

Shortcut to Cloudinary’s solution When the JPEG codec was being developed in the late 1980s, no standardized, lossy image-compression formats existed. JPEG became ready at exactly the right time in 1992, when the World Wide Web and digital cameras were about to become…

Progressive image decoding is an excellent way in which to accelerate page loads and hence improve the web-browsing experience. This post explains why and elaborates on the recent developments for that approach. The Importance of Image Compression Some people say that since internet speeds are continually trending faster, we…

Fidelity in images is about visually preserving the original; appeal is about hiding the compression artifacts. Depending on your priority, you would compress images with either of these approaches to reduce the file size while still maintaining a reasonable level of visual “quality”: If fidelity is more important, you’d aim…

Since its founding, Cloudinary’s mission has been to help companies unleash the full potential of their media to create the most engaging visual experiences. In keeping with that quest, we support new codecs for images and videos as soon as possible. The next-generation image codec from the JPEG Committee is…

A year ago, I talked about JPEG XL at ImageCon 2019. It’s time for an update. Brief Recap JPEG XL is a next-generation image codec currently being standardized by the JPEG Committee. Based on Google’s PIK codec and Cloudinary’s Free Universal Image Format (FUIF) codec,…

JPEG images are either progressive or nonprogressive, depending on their encoding order, not politics. Encoding of and decoding of nonprogressive occurs in this simple order: from top to bottom and from left to right. Consequently, when a nonprogressive JPEG is loading on a slow connection, you see the image’s…

Part 1 of this series introduces the Free Lossy Image Format (FUIF), which I recently developed. Part 2 explains the why, what, and how of FUIF. This post, part 3 of the series, delves into how FUIF is legacy friendly, which I alluded to in Part 2. A…

In my last post, I introduced FUIF, a new, free, and universal image format I’ve created. In this post and other follow-up pieces, I will explain the why, what, and how of FUIF. Why Do We Need Another Image File Format? Even though JPEG is still the most widely-used…

I’ve been working to create a new image format, which I’m calling FUIF, or Free Universal Image Format. That’s a rather pretentious name, I know. But I couldn’t call it the Free Lossy Image Format (FLIF) because that acronym is not available any more (see below) and FUIF can do…

Lossy image compression is a great way to reduce the file size of an image, which helps to improve the performance of your website or app and cut bandwidth costs. And, if it goes well, nobody can tell the difference. If it goes well… When lossy compression does not go…

This talk was given at DevoxxUK by Jon Sneyers Talk Summary Images are a crucial part of any website or app. In this talk we’ll give a brief history of image formats for the web, discussing both the universally supported GIF, JPEG, and PNG formats and some of the…

Cellular Automata are pretty cool things to play with. There are many, many variants, like Conway’s Game of Life, Abelian Sandpiles, Langton’s Loops and Brian’s Brain, but in this blogpost, I’ll just talk about the simplest kinds of cellular automata: one-dimensional cellular automata. The simplest…

In part one (One pixel is worth three thousand words) of this turned-to-be-two-part blog post, I discussed one-pixel images and how well different image formats “compress” these images. I was surprised how much there is to be said about the matter. This was supposed to be a short blog…

A couple of months ago while taking a break from implementing cool new features like q_auto and g_auto, I was joking in our team chat about how well various image formats “compress” one-pixel images. In response, Orly — who runs the blog — asked me if I’d…

Generation loss, a term originally rooted in the world of analog media, refers to the quality degradation that occurs when audio or video is reproduced. In the context of analog tape and audio transfers, each copy of an original source is a new generation, and with each transfer, the quality…