Chrome 155 Ships Decoding Support For JPEG XL 76
Google has released Chrome 155 with support for decoding JPEG XL images, a format that offers 30-50% better compression than JPEG along with lossless compression, JPEG transcoding, HDR, animation, and progressive decoding. From a blog post: We expect that JPEG XL is most helpful for high-fidelity or lossless compression, especially of photographic images or in cases in which fine-grained progressive decoding is preferred. In this post, we share why we brought JPEG XL to Chrome, how we used Rust to ensure memory safety first, the extensive performance work that makes it fast, and what the journey tells us about developer feedback and the web standards ecosystem.
[...] With JPEG XL officially landing in Chrome, the web becomes faster, richer, and safer. We encourage developers, content creators, and platform owners to start using .jxl images and animations in their pipelines. Try it out, file bugs, and help us continue building a faster and safer web for everyone.
[...] With JPEG XL officially landing in Chrome, the web becomes faster, richer, and safer. We encourage developers, content creators, and platform owners to start using .jxl images and animations in their pipelines. Try it out, file bugs, and help us continue building a faster and safer web for everyone.
Everyones on a fscking "journey" (Score:4, Funny)
No you pasty faced basement dwellers, a "journey" is when you get off your fat backsides and travel in the real world. Its not just completing a work task however long it might take.
Re:Everyones on a fscking "journey" (Score:5, Funny)
May the 'phors be with you! ;-)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm unclear on the reference. Only thing that comes to mind as a possible candidate in this JPEG context is phosphors, but that was a long time ago.
Probably shouldn't add that I tangentially like the sig, though perhaps it could be a "car stolen for parts"? My related metaphorical thought on international relations is that America used to be like the older brother who mostly protected you, but has mutated into the wicked old stepsister. I guess that metaphor then calls for regarding the super-rich owners of
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I'm unclear on the reference. Only thing that comes to mind as a possible candidate in this JPEG context is phosphors, but that was a long time ago.
"Journey" is often used as a metaphor for activities such as the "completing a work task however long it might take" which the post I was responding complained about. Viol8 was insisting on the literal, physical-world meaning of the word, so I decided to tease him a bit.
Probably shouldn't add that I tangentially like the sig, though perhaps it could be a "car stolen for parts"?
The actual theft occurred so long ago that prosecution is probably statute-barred. And they've been stripping it all along - they ju
Re: (Score:2)
Mostly the ACK, but thanks for clarifying. If I understand correctly, your original joke was based on the word "metaphors", not "phosphors" or something else. I didn't understand the linkage between your secondary joke and the joke your were replying to.
If you like SF, then I recommend Ancillary Justice fairly strongly. I don't read that much SF these years, but it seemed to be one of the best I've read, with many atmospheric elements that reminded me of the great Iain Banks. Another recent one with some
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Safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
The hell are they talking about "safer?" What is unsafe about PNG and JPEG?
Stupid marketing trash.
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents, buddy. Developers know things better than you do. Plus other reasons, but I suspect you'll just handwave them all away because you're very very smart. It's definitely not vastly better than JPEG XL.
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HEIC is worthless because it's illegal to implement unless you get permission. Maybe in 20 years it'll be usable.
Don't like that fact? Then we need to find and support (oh no, and be?) political candidates who oppose software patents.
You shouldn't need anyone's permission to write a computer program. It's infuriating.
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Look, I use HEIC, but JPEG-XL is just better.
* Royalty-free
* Lossless transcoding of legacy JPEGs to immediately reduce their sizes by ~20% (fast enough that you can have webservers do it in realtime)
* Better fine detail / high frequency data representation for the same bitrate. HEIC was designed for video and simply is not as good at stills.
* Faster decoding
* MUCH faster compression
* True progressive decoding - and not old-school blocky progressive decoding, but using a smart algorithm that restores coarse detail (particularly focusing on parts of the image that the eyes immediately focus on) first, then progressively adding in finer detail that the eyes take more time to notice later.
* Vastly better lossless compression
* Better colour depth and native HDR (up to 32 bit per channel)
* Up to 1B x 1B pixel images (again, useful for scientific and engineering applications), with efficient loading (don't have to load and decode the whole 1B x 1B image at full resolution to view it)
* Arbitrary colour spaces - you can even use it for scientific hyperspectral imaging. You can include e.g. alpha, depth maps, thermal data, selection masks, etc etc.
It's just a better format for stills. It's annoying that it's taken this long to get support to take off (because it takes ages for most people to update their browsers), but I'm really glad that it's starting to.
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that's an impressive list of differences. i'd like to see a side-by-side
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot doesn't have table support, so it's hard to do side-by-side well, but:
JPEG XL advantages:
Licensing:
JPEG XL: Fully royalty-free (Open source / Apache 2.0)
HEIC: Proprietary patent minefield (MPEG LA, Advance, Velos; royalties apply)
Legacy JPEG Migration:
JPEG XL: Lossless, reversible bitstream transcoding (~20% smaller); fast enough for real-time web servers
HEIC: Lossy re-encode only (generational quality loss; cannot reconstruct original JPEG)
Fine Detail & Textures
JPEG XL: Retains sharp text, fine lines, subtle textures, and film grain
HEIC: Video-derived coding (HEVC / X.265). Tends to smooth out high frequences and smudge grain.
Software Encoding Speed
JPEG XL: Extremely fast; highly parallelized SIMD architecture
HEIC: Exceptionally slow and computationally expensive in software
Software Decoding Speed
JPEG XL: Fast, lightweight multi-threaded CPU decoding
HEIC: Heavy CPU overhead (without using hardware acceleration)
Progressive Rendering:
JPEG XL: True progressive decode; smart saliency algorithm to focus bandwidth on critical details first.
HEIC: None; full file must be received and decoded before display
Lossless Compression
JPEG XL: Dedicated modular mode; vastly outperforms PNG and WebP
HEIC: Ill-suited; you basically have to try to do lossless compression with an inherently-lossy format
Bit Depth & HDR
JPEG XL: Native HDR; up to 32-bit floating point per channel
HEIC: Typically capped at 10-bit or 12-bit integer
Max Dimensions & Scaling
JPEG XL: Up to 1B x 1B; efficient viewport/crop loading without full decoding
HEIC: v5.2, 4096x2160; v6.2: 8192x4320; a tiling hack allows up to 16384 x 16384
Channels & Color Spaces:
JPEG XL: Arbitrary color spaces (hyperspectral); unlimited extra channels (alpha, depth, thermal, masks, CMYK, etc)
HEIC: Rigid container; limited auxiliary channels and standard video color spaces
HEIC advantages:
Rollout / acceleration:
JPEG XL: no dedicated hardware acceleration (thankfully, it's not as important because it's so much more efficient). Software adoption still rolling out.
HEIC: Hardware silicon (ASICs). Default capture format on modern iOS/Android; native capture in Sony, Canon, and Nikon cameras
Video:
JPEG XL: Supports animations (GIF/APNG replacement), with some optimizations** (it's not just a series of stills), but lacks the full set of optimizations that a proper video codec has.
HEIC: Container naively pairs full HEVC video tracks and audio with video.
** - JPEG XL can store up to 4 reference frames in a buffer, with multiple blending modes from the references (add, replace, multiply, etc); has subframe bounding boxes ("dirty rectangles") for when only part of a frame changes; invisible frames; modular deltas (differences between frames); etc. However, it lacks motion vectors (e.g. detecting a feature drifting across a scene and simply having to encode "move it" (followed by any needed deltas). So it's great for "GIFs", but if you wanted to encode a full movie, it'd be significantly larger than e.g. HEVC.
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Nice comparison. Informative, (no mod points.)
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You think LLMs would write "Slashdot doesn't have table support, so it's hard to do side-by-side well, but:"? You think LLMs like writing sentences that end in conjunctions that express incomplete thoughts? Do you think LLMs write "high frequences", "naively pairs", call H.265 X.265 (I was thinking of what you refer to it as in ffmpeg), imbalanced parens after "lacks motion vectors",etc?
Don't get me wrong, I am a LLM user, I absolutely do use it sometimes for search, fact checking things I'm writing, spel
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thanks. I did mean a comparison on file / video performance but i appreciate your effort
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I see you've mastered talking to people who talk to LLMs. That's even harder than doing prompt engineering alone, my hat is off.
Re: Safer? (Score:2)
And here I thought geeks and hackers prioritized freedom and technical superiority over popularity. I'm fortunate you are here to correct my faulty assumption.
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Sorry that HEIC is now ubiquitous. You must find that infuriating.
Yes and so should you. Why should you be forced to pay extra to someone multiple times through every piece of software you use, because they did some math?
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Sorry that HEIC is now ubiquitous.
Ubiquitous: existing or being everywhere at the same time; constantly encountered.
Windows: holds 76.36% of the worldwide desktop operating system market
HEIC on Windows: Microsoft Store HEVC Video Extension costs $0.99
Yeah, no. Yes, it's present on Apple devices. And admittedly there are about as many iPhones as Windows computers. But that's still half, and it's not the important half where actual work is generally done. It's the half where annoying people take pictures and send them to people that n
HEIC is terribly bad and force license cost! (Score:3)
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I think they are referring to "we used Rust to ensure memory safety first"
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Informative)
It's the same jxl-rs library that Google co-developed with Mozilla for Firefox [slashdot.org].
Re:Safer? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one said that. No one said it's "safe". They said it's "safer". Memory-safety makes the whole codebase safer than not having memory safety.
Now go look up what a "comparative adjective" is so you don't say something stupid again in the future.
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Why so stupid?
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Ad hominem is the lowest level of argument. And then you chose "stupid" instead of at least somehow trying to relate to the topic. Sad!
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I replied to your post with the respect you showed me. You started down this ad hominem path. Now let's finish the game you chose to play moron.
You're more than welcome to respond to my original point and bring the conversation back on track. Until then I'm just going to treat you like the stupid idiot you are. You wanted this. You chose this, not me. I responded to the point, you didn't. And now you're upset like the dumb fuck you are. Truly no braincell in you head.
Yeah sad indeed.
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Read your own post and think about why someone would want to discuss with you after that post.
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There is nothing safer in adding a new file format. It increases the potential attack surface.
I can believe that the code itself might have a lower chance of exploitable bugs given the language used to implement it, but nevertheless it cannot but add to the risk. Safer would be not to support it at all. (I am not suggesting it is a bad idea to support it... just factually, it isn't safer to add it).
And you are right about image decoders being a "great" way to attack...typical implementations are highly opti
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There is nothing safer in adding a new file format. It increases the potential attack surface.
That's not the question here. There is nothing optional about adding the file format, in fact back when it was optional Google removed it from their experimental Chrome release for exactly this reason. But now their hand has been forced by PDF/A and they will need JPEGXL support in order to ship a browser capable of reading PDFs.
The comparison here isn't between Chrome with JPEGXL and without. It's a comparison between JPEGXL using the rust based library and JPEGXL using the C++ based library that came befo
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There's no possible way you're a programmer.
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When you need addons and plugins for certain types of content, that adds the potential for a security problem if you download the wrong browser extension. So, having it built in is going to be more secure.
Chrome. Gross. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's still Chrome. The LEAST safe browser.
And we've known it's spyware garbage for years now. Stop using Chrome.
Re: Chrome. Gross. (Score:3)
No, edge is the least safe browser. It's even worse.
Translation (Score:2)
Our beneficence now allows corporations to put JPEG XL images on their web-pages.
Because web-pages are prettier: Trust us, we've been dumbing-down our browser for your benefit.
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I'd like to see some comparisons between power consumption for JXL and JPEG. Constant image quality, file sizes will vary, total energy consumed by the download and decoding process.
Too bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
...I locked myself to 149 because I don't want to see ads.
Re:Too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
You also don't want to see security updates? It's simply not safe to use an old browser.
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It's not that safe using any browser. Just because bugs are listed doesn't mean they didn't exist unreported for decades. If you want to be safe, you have to seriously isolate the browser and question any data that comes out of it. Browsers update so much and are ridiculously complex it's silly to think a new one is actually more safe than an old one; so now we have way more bug fixes going on than before so maybe it is more safe-- but the fact we have so many is not a good sign; perhaps now we catch them
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I bet you leave all your front door unlocked and open at home since someone could just break a window and therefore your house will never be safe.
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Browsers have to keep the crooks honest, a much more significant task. More so when the thing is designed to be Swiss Cheese. And on top of that when a web page can also be an app within the browser.
Also that front door is not exposed to every criminal on the planet.
Re: Too bad... (Score:2)
Those are all good reasons why you would do the updates, and very bad reasons not to, so those are puzzling statements to make in this context even though they are accurate.
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Re:Too bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll stick with Firefox since we still have plugins available for that stuff.
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Plugins? Don't you mean Extensions?
Plugins have been gone for many years now.
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Firefox still lists plugins as well as extensions when you go in there.
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Yeah, just the DRM modules for Netflix and other protected content.
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Same shit, different name. A piece of code that modifies the default behavior.
Re:Too bad... (Score:5, Informative)
Plugins were *NOT* extensions. They were code that was executed outside the browser process. Extensions are entire inside the browser "sandbox."
Long Road (Score:4, Interesting)
JPEG-XL is a good format but I just realized yesterday that Google Docs on Android doesn't support inserting a webp image a decade after Google was pushing it. I had one from a website and needed to run it through imagemagick first.
Android supports it, all the apps using android image primitives supoort it, but one of Google's flagship apps still doesn't.
We used move much faster thirty years ago. If an app supported say GIF, PNM, and TGA when JPEG came out it was supported in the next release.
Hopefully this round will be better. It's probably a management problem ... maybe they will listen to their chatbot since they don't listen to their engineers.
Re: Long Road (Score:2)
Firefox doesn't preview webp images in the file dialog on Linux either. So fucking annoying. What year is it?
As someone who likes Rust (Score:2, Troll)
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Not as bad as C... it's had to get this bad before finally C started doing serious work to add features being demand for decades and all the security problems that were arrogantly ignored. You have staying power when you can adapt and while C was so well made it lasted all this time nobody can predict all future needs and they needed to grow. Rust answered the demand and C is only just beginning to realize as it loses ground and more importantly, strong advocates. It's another example of hubris. Those "fa
Re: As someone who likes Rust (Score:2)
And it would be so easy to make C safe with a single extra keyword (eg "safe") that forces inclusion of bounds checking on array access and pointer dereferencing. Hell, it could even be put in a macro so its only defined in a debug build not the production build.
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Re: (Score:2)
Except Rust has to include bounds checking in its runtime slowing it down unless you use an unsafe block in which case its no better than C. There's no free lunch.
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Re: As someone who likes Rust (Score:2)
Maybe they can get compilers for some more architectures first
Re:As someone who likes Rust (Score:4, Interesting)
Some people have enough of a problem with linux kernel modules not having a stable abi (which seeming as kernel modules are kernel specific imho it's fair to no be stable). But rust the compiler doesn't even have a stable abi.
That means recompiling absolutely everything from scratch the moment you change compiler versions. That means not being able to link to a library (crate) unless you have the exact compiler version that was used to compile it.
This is it's greatest limitation in regards to whole system work. Not being able to link libraries in a standardized fashion is a big deal and a big problem.
The language can be fine, but unless you plan to never use external libraries, it's a bit of a show stopper.
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Nothing has turned into a religion. Programming rust is safer than not programming in rust due to the nature of the language and how it needs to be used to create the same class of bugs. That's not religion, that's a simple verifiable fact. No one said it's "safe", they said "safer". There's a previous implementation in a language without memory safety to compare it to.
Why did they remove it in the first place? (Score:2)
Why did they remove JPEG XL from Chrome in the first place?
Re:Why did they remove it in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unused, and no use case for it, no pathway predicting it would become popular, and no reason to develop it further.
That changed when the PDF/A decided to adopt JPEGXL officially. Now PDF readers need to implement JPEGXL and both Chrome and Firefox include PDF readers in the browser. Their hand was forced.
That begs the question... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No it begs no such question. But to answer your independent question that wasn't begged, no there's no patent encumberment in JPEGXL, it's defined as an IEC standard, and has a reference implementation free for use under the Apache 2.0 license.
Keep the damn pixels (Score:4, Interesting)
The lossless JPEG transcoding is the feature I like here. There are already mountains of JPEGs around, and making them smaller while retaining the ability to recover the exact original file gives people a useful reason to adopt the format. Nobody has to run their old photos through another lossy conversion just to save some space. Progressive decoding is welcome too; on a slow connection I'd rather see the whole photo gradually sharpen up than stare at an empty rectangle. Now I hope the image editors and desktop viewers catch up wherever support is missing. Being able to view something on a website and then having trouble opening the downloaded file is the sort of annoyance that makes people give up and take a screenshot, undoing half the benefit.
I wish there was a well supported successor to jpg (Score:2)
Closed gardens are everywhere where there are multiple fiefdoms that you don't even realize you are in unless you look outside.
Theoretically HEIF is great as an Apple solution. My Sony camera supports writing to heif... but for some reason I can't directly import them to my android. It's supposedly an open format, but it is a bit awkward to get working for anything non-apple.
WebP is also theoretically a great solution from Google. But again, you jump into the Apple ecosystem and the support is weird in t
HEIF required license FEE PER DEVICE (Score:2)
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Why point out Rust? (Score:2)
Does this mean .webp can die? (Score:2)