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WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

eng.aurelienpierre.com

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Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#71

Post by rahen »

bawolff wrote: post #52
rahen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the point he's making: webp requires 30% more data to achieve the same dynamic than jpeg, so there's no real use for it.

Did he make that point? The only time he thought they were equivalent was when using lossless mode, which is not a reasonable comparison. He never actually compared webp at 30% more quality than jpeg.

> "WebP is actually 39 % heavier than JPEG 85 plus noise for a similar-ish look on this difficult picture, and still not totally as smooth as the JPEG (there is still a tiny bit of ringing). It’s also 30 % heavier than JPEG 90 with simple Floyd-Steinberg dithering."

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#72

Post by xmcqdpt2 »

j1elo wrote: post #23
laserbeam wrote: post #6

I know this is not constructive and I'm sorry, but I just can't read the text with those st and ct ligatures. It makes me feel like the author is trolling with them and I shouldn't take the text seriously. I know that's an exaggeration but that's what the design makes me feel.

But why to draw hairs between all 'ct' and 'st'? As a non-native speaker, is that some English weirdness that I have yet to learn about?

Ligatures are old fashioned in English but still very common in French. Some ligatures are actually mandatory (like the oe in cœur, heart) while others like st are pretty common in proper typefaces such as those used for novels. The author is probably French (Aurélien).

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#73

Post by eviks »

Latty wrote: post #7
ColonelPhantom wrote: post #3

It's such a shame Google decided to block adoption of JPEG XL: it's a strict improvement over classic JPEG (you can losslessly reencode JPEG to JXL and reduce the size, due to a better entropy coder in JXL!) and JXL has various other upgrades compared to 'classic' JPEG. In the meantime, let's hope AVIF or whatever manages to pick up the slack, and/or other browsers decide en masse to support JPEG XL anyway; that woul…

I must admit, I'm not sure why JPEG XL is viewed so favourably on HN, it's not something I know a ton about, but my understanding is that the big advantage of AVIF is that you can reuse hardware decoders built into devices for AV1 for the images. It being a strict improvement over JPEG is nice for the developers not having to go back to the source image for an upgrade, but that seems like a pretty small benefit that…

Part of the reason is because it's a technically superior codec, check out John Snyer's series of blogs on comparisons, e.g., https://cloudinary.com/blog/time_for_next_gen_codecs_to_deth...

Video codecs as used for images also have big disadvantages since they weren't designed for many picture-focused workflows

> only matters during the transitional period.

which can be decades, so this matters a lot

> it seems to massively outweigh any advantage JXL has

Since you haven't listed any other advantages outside of downplaying the compatibility during transition, so that's hard to weigh. Also, it's not like, if we're talking about the whole lifetime, hardware couldn't add support

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#74

Post by lakpan »

chrismorgan wrote: post #47
ColonelPhantom wrote: post #3

It's such a shame Google decided to block adoption of JPEG XL: it's a strict improvement over classic JPEG (you can losslessly reencode JPEG to JXL and reduce the size, due to a better entropy coder in JXL!) and JXL has various other upgrades compared to 'classic' JPEG. In the meantime, let's hope AVIF or whatever manages to pick up the slack, and/or other browsers decide en masse to support JPEG XL anyway; that woul…

Google haven’t explicitly decided to block adoption of JPEG XL. They removed an incomplete implementation from Chromium which had never been shipped, because it was a maintenance burden and they weren’t ready to commit to supporting it. That’s quite a different thing. It may indicate a broader strategic direction, but it doesn’t necessarily.

I want to believe.

Having an immediate upgrade path to all pictures from the past is too good an opportunity to pass up.

We rarely get a free “compress losslessly” button for our archives.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#75

Post by RealStickman_ »

bawolff wrote: post #35

I can see some banding on the one labeled webp lossless. What gives? Is the banding in the source material? Are we using a different definition of "lossless" than i am used to? Edit: i think maybe my browser is scaling the photo which is adding artifacts. Edit2: maybe the thumbnails are scaled at different quality levels???

You have to open the images in a new tab to get the full res version. Then the webp lossless looks perfect.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#76

Post by Beijinger »

arp242 wrote: post #39
V__ wrote: post #4

I opened the first two pictures in separate tabs and switched quickly between them. There is zero difference. Tried it on two different monitors, Chrome and Firefox. Same with the pictures of the guy at the end. EDIT: The last comparison is webp twice, he linked it wrong. Here is the jpg one, still no difference: https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/20...

I did the same, and it took me a long time to spot it, but in the upper-right corner you see circles in the WebP version. It's outside the centre of attention, so it's not that obvious. Actually, it wasn't until I saw the second picture and knew what to look for that I spotted this in the first picture. It's not so easy to see if the browser zooms the image, so make sure to open the image and set zoom to 100%. I also…

I always zoom in on pictures on the web to see if the compression is good or if there are artifacts.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#77

Post by iainmerrick »

bawolff wrote: post #52
rahen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the point he's making: webp requires 30% more data to achieve the same dynamic than jpeg, so there's no real use for it.

Did he make that point? The only time he thought they were equivalent was when using lossless mode, which is not a reasonable comparison. He never actually compared webp at 30% more quality than jpeg.

He did, about halfway through:

WebP [lossy, 96] is actually 39 % heavier than JPEG 85 plus noise for a similar-ish look on this difficult picture, and still not totally as smooth as the JPEG (there is still a tiny bit of ringing). It’s also 30 % heavier than JPEG 90 with simple Floyd-Steinberg dithering.

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#78

Post by PetitPrince »

A bit of context: Aurelien Pierre is known to be a major contributor to Darktable (open source raw developper / catalog ; in other words, an open source Adobe Lightroom), and is known to have strong opinion about the correct way do to stuff, to the point of abrasiveness and to the point where he has forked Darktable into its own stuff (Ansel; see HN discussion some times ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38390914 ).

Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)

#79

Post by [deleted] »

627467 wrote: post #66

> To the non-educated eye, this might look ok, but for a photographer it’s not, and for several reasons. There surely must be better examples to show "non-educated" plebs (to use the tone of the post) why webp is bad and to justify the post and the tone. I'm on Android, maybe this is why all pic quality look the same? Also - yeah, if you are making pics for educated eyes: don't use tech that is not suitable for educa…

[deleted]
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