Live data from Hacker News

File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)

skientia.co

21–25 of 25 posts

Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)

#21
post #6
post #4

I think a missing context here is that this is aimed at people who work with VFX and other forms of computer-made images; and even more in context of "what should your authoritative master format for archival purposes be". Which also makes the line about JPEG noise make a lot more sense. AFAICT, this is not a generic "PNG always bad and you should never use it to display images on the web" screen.

I agree with their VFX arguments (well, I'll take their word for most of it, since I don't work in the VFX industry), but they also say > Never ever PNG, not even for web

You're right; I somehow missed that part, and it makes me more skeptical about the overall article now.

Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)

#22
post #5

> Screen-grabs can be taken in JPG JPEG is unacceptable for screenshots of text, unless you can disable chroma subsampling, which isn't always an exposed option. As a quick test, I took a screenshot of this comment, and saved it as both a PNG and 100% quality 444 JPEG, exported from GIMP. The JPEG is 81477 bytes, and the PNG is 44212.

I was surprised and confused about this, specially because I take certain care on the screenshots I paste on technical docs everyday, using PNG and a quantizer to reduce color depth. But on second read I think we're making a mistake because we work on a different domain. I think the article exclusively refers to images produced I'm the workflow of video/CGI/3D rendering and generation for the motion films/multimedia…

They are primarily talking about VFX workflows, but they make it quite clear that their opinions of PNG extend to all other use cases too

Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)

#23
that file format is mainly used in professional settings and yes, it is good. but saying that png is bad is nonsense. png has been designed to REPLACE GIF that was the target : do what GIF does, without the Lempel-Ziv patent issue. and drop a few improvements... that's it.

comparing something that was designed to replace GIF for Internet use to a professional-level image format designed for specific industrial (as in cinema) work... what the hell ?

if you/they want to push for EXR, make a proposal to the browser developers. and in the end, the website developers and public will choose.

how big those pictures are, how fast they load, how costly it is on the CPU (we are going in a world where how much power you use IS going to be important, and on fixed machines as much as phones).

Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)

#24
post #16
post #7

This page makes no sense: e.g. proposing (uncompressed) jpeg over png for screenshots without any explanation why (note that even uncompressed jpeg doesn't necessarily store the exact original rgb color values but is likely ok for 8-bit rgb). Calls png "forbidden" but lists a bunch of other formats (without listing an actually good one like jpeg xl) as a valid replacement without saying what those (like webp which in…

PNG can display HDR, but the lack of floating-point support does put it at a disadvantage as an intermediate format (there's a demo about half way down the page comparing 16-bit PNG against fp16 EXR, during exposure adjustment)

[deleted]

Re: File Formats Debunk – Why you should stop rendering to PNG (and use EXR instead)

#25
post #5

> Screen-grabs can be taken in JPG JPEG is unacceptable for screenshots of text, unless you can disable chroma subsampling, which isn't always an exposed option. As a quick test, I took a screenshot of this comment, and saved it as both a PNG and 100% quality 444 JPEG, exported from GIMP. The JPEG is 81477 bytes, and the PNG is 44212.

took random screenshot with text.

original - ~200kB png. oxiPNG - ~107kB.

Browser Jpeg - 604kB, MozJPEG 100 - 538kB, MozJPEG 100 RGB - 669kB.

JpegXL lossless - 26kB.

AVIF lossless max effort - 306kB

Post reply on HN