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FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

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Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#171

Post by vanderZwan »

twotwotwo wrote: post #38
tangm wrote: post #15

It looks like the the creator (Jon Sneyers) has since (2019) made another image format more focused on the lossy compression, FUIF[0], which itself has been subsumed by the JPEG XL format[1]. I hope the "JPEG" branding doesn't make folks think that JPEG XL isn't also a lossless format! [0] https://github.com/cloudinary/fuif [1] https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/index.html

JXL is an interesting standard. Integrates a recompressor that shaves ~20% off .jpgs without further loss(!), FUIF for essentially-lossless images in a progressive/interlaced mode like this, a separate lossless format, and a new lossy format with variable-sized DCTs and a bunch of other new tools (other transforms for DCT-unfriendly content, postfilter for DCT artifacts, new colorspace, chroma-from-luma...). It's int…

> Play in your browser: http://libwebpjs.appspot.com/jpegxl/

> Input: 61710Bytes => JPEGXL: 35845Bytes 0.58% size of input

I think someone forgot to multiply by 100. (too bad, I mean 172x compression would be even more amazing!)

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#172

Post by GoblinSlayer »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #142
yason wrote: post #140

Yet, I think it's really hard to change what has stuck. The gains have to be enormous to warrant the hassle of trying to keep publishing in and supporting a new image format until it just works for everyone. The reason we have PNG and JPEG is that they are, all in all, more than good enough. Yes, the dreaded "good enough" argument surfaces again stronger than ever. They are also easy to understand, i.e. use JPEG for…

The reason we have jpeg is because png is not good enough for photos and people prefer the lossy compression of jpeg over using png. The reason other lossy formats are struggling is because they are still lossy. This promises to basically be good enough for just about anything. That sounds like a big promise but if true, there's very little stopping major browser implementing support for this. I'd say progressive dec…

File size matters for networks, not compression. Compressors have an interface where you specify desired file size and the program tries to produce a file of that size. With better compression algorithm the image will be just of a better quality, time to download and cost per GB will be the same.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#173

Post by dTal »

jjcm wrote: post #47

Always cool to see new visual compression libraries hit the scene. That said I think the hardest part isn't the math of it, but the adoption of it. Likely the format with the best chance of overthrowing the jpg/gif/png incumbents is AVIF. Since it's based on AV1, you'd get hardware acceleration for decoding/encoding once it starts becoming a standard, and browser support will be trivial to add once AV1 has wide suppo…

Worth noting that it's not really "new" as such, being over 4 years old. It still doesn't seem to have hugely caught on...

That said, lossless codecs have it easier because you can freely transcode between them as the mood takes you, with no generation loss, so there's less lock-in. For example, FLAC is dominant in audio, but there are a variety of other smaller lossless formats which still see use. Nobody much minds.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#174

Post by GoblinSlayer »

ubercow13 wrote: post #157
yason wrote: post #140

Yet, I think it's really hard to change what has stuck. The gains have to be enormous to warrant the hassle of trying to keep publishing in and supporting a new image format until it just works for everyone. The reason we have PNG and JPEG is that they are, all in all, more than good enough. Yes, the dreaded "good enough" argument surfaces again stronger than ever. They are also easy to understand, i.e. use JPEG for…

With the amount of images readily available on the internet with easily visible JPEG compression artifacts, and sometimes the difficulty of finding images without such, I would say there is still quite a lot to gain from better image formats.

If it supports lossy compression, I'm sure you can have a heavily compressed text in that lossy format.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#175

Post by andrius4669 »

jiofih wrote: post #121
sand500 wrote: post #42

In terms of getting it into chrome: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=539120 > Keep in mind that the author of the FLIF works on the new FUIF ( https://github.com/cloudinary/fuif ) which will be part of the JPEG XL. So, probably FLIF will be deprecated soon. And as far as JPEG XL is also based on Google PIX, there is a high probability that Google will support this new format in their Blink engine…

Is JPEG XL also suited to replace PNG like FLIF?

yeah. it's partially based on https://github.com/cloudinary/fuif so if you use that part of JPEG XL you'll get something similar out of it.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#176

Post by someguyorother »

ralusek wrote: post #76
modeless wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have the feature where the file can be truncated to any size to form its own thumbnail? That would be an incredibly useful feature in so many applications.

Surely not any size. It'd have to be squares or something for that to make any sense, right?

Some wavelet formats (SPIHT and EZW e.g) have the property that truncating the lossless version at 10% of the size gives you the 10:1 lossy rendering of that picture. That property holds not just for 10% but for any fraction of the file.

It's not quite the same thing, but a very highly compressed high-res picture would probably look okay in thumbnail format.

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#177

Post by gardaani »

BurningCycles wrote: post #55
jjcm wrote: post #47

Always cool to see new visual compression libraries hit the scene. That said I think the hardest part isn't the math of it, but the adoption of it. Likely the format with the best chance of overthrowing the jpg/gif/png incumbents is AVIF. Since it's based on AV1, you'd get hardware acceleration for decoding/encoding once it starts becoming a standard, and browser support will be trivial to add once AV1 has wide suppo…

>Likely the format with the best chance of overthrowing the jpg/gif/png incumbents is AVIF I used to think the same as well, however I now think Jpeg XL is poised to be the 'winner' among next gen image codecs. It's royalty free, great lossy and lossless compression which is said to beat the competition, as well as providing a perfect upgrade path for existing jpeg's as it can losslessly recompress them into the jpeg…

I hope that JPEG XL will be simpler than the competitors. If it's compression ratio is similar to AVIF and it can do HDR, then I'll all for it!

AVIF (and its image sequences) seems to be fairly complicated. Here's few comments [1] about it:

"Given all that I'm also beginning to understand why some folks want something simpler like webp2 :)"

"Despite authoring libavif (library, not the standard) and being a big fan of the AV1 codec, I do occasionally find HEIF/AVIF as a format to be a bit "it can do anything!", which is likely to lead to huge or fragmented/incomplete implementations."

Anyway, instead of adding FLIF, AVIF, BPG, and lots of similar image formats to web browsers, I think only one good format is enough and JPEG XR might be it. After something has been added to web browsers, it can't be removed.

Safari hasn't added support for WebP (which is good, there's no need for WebP after AVIF/JPEG XR is out) and it hasn't added support for HEIF (which is weird, considering Apple is using it on iOS), but maybe they know that there's no need to rush.

[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=960620...

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#178

Post by jhabdas »

gardaani wrote: post #177
BurningCycles wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Likely the format with the best chance of overthrowing the jpg/gif/png incumbents is AVIF I used to think the same as well, however I now think Jpeg XL is poised to be the 'winner' among next gen image codecs. It's royalty free, great lossy and lossless compression which is said to beat the competition, as well as providing a perfect upgrade path for existing jpeg's as it can losslessly recompress them into the jpeg…

I hope that JPEG XL will be simpler than the competitors. If it's compression ratio is similar to AVIF and it can do HDR, then I'll all for it! AVIF (and its image sequences) seems to be fairly complicated. Here's few comments [1] about it: "Given all that I'm also beginning to understand why some folks want something simpler like webp2 :)" "Despite authoring libavif (library, not the standard) and being a big fan of…

Browsers don't need the codecs anyway. They just need Wasm and a decoder. Clients can do the work[1] until the hardware supports the goods.

[1] https://git.habd.as/comfusion/fractal-forest/src/branch/mast...

Re: FLIF – Free Lossless Image Format

#180

Post by ChrisLomont »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #123
Scaevolus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This presentation covers why AVIF isn't a great replacement for JPEG-- mostly that it's slow, complicated, and lacks a progressive mode. https://www.slideshare.net/cloudinarymarketing/imagecon-2019...

Why would the lack of a progressive mode matter? How is a progressive mode better than a "loading..." spinner?

Systems that render low res can download the prefix of the file and show an image, and stop there. Many modern image formats support this for precisely this reason. If you then want higher quality for some particular image, you can download more, not having to start over with a separate image file.
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