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JPEG XL image format promises smaller files, backwards compatibility and more

14 Jul

JPEG, the lossy compression standard for images used on the Internet and digital cameras, might receive a much-needed upgrade by year’s end. The creators of JPEG XL claim their free open-source format offers up improvements that will result in a significant reduction in global bandwidth and storage costs.

The JPEG image format was first developed by researchers at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in the 1980s. Over the years, due to its many advantages over other formats of the time, it became the go-to format for photos on digital cameras and the World Wide Web. At the time, it was revolutionary, cutting down on the time it took for images to load (think 5 seconds compared to minutes) and could store up to 50 images, rather than 1, on a memory card.

For almost 30 years, this standard, which uses data compression to keep files small, has remained largely unchanged and unchallenged, even after several unsuccessful attempts. That, however, could change. Several formats introduced in the past to replace JPEG, including JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, Google’s WebP, and even HEIC have fallen short of widespread adoption. JPEG XL is hoping to rewrite that script.

JPEG XL can take existing JPEG files and transcode them, losslessly, to reduce their size without compromising their quality. A single JPEG XL file can be stored on a server and serve both JPEG and JPEG XL clients. A JPEG XL file can also be restored to the initial JPEG through backwards compatibility without compromising the file.

The format will benefit photographers by including a wide color gamut, HDR (high dynamic range), and high bit depth images.

The format will benefit photographers by including a wide color gamut, HDR (high dynamic range), and high bit depth images. Support for printing, large panoramas, 360-degree imagery, and image bursts is also available. Optimized for responsive web environments, it’s also addressing current Internet user needs on a wide range of devices such as tablets and smartphones.

‘JPEG XL further includes features such as animation, alpha channels, layers, thumbnails, lossless and progressive coding to support a wide range of use cases including but not limited to photo galleries, e-commerce, social media, user interfaces and cloud storage,’ reads the official overview. What the creators promise is superior image quality, a codec ratio smaller than the typical 20:1 to 50:1, and encoding plus decoding without hardware acceleration on mobile devices.

The standard has four specifications which will be combined to make JPEG XL the standard, going forward, by the end of 2021, so long as the project doesn’t encounter any setbacks. Even if it gets set in stone before the end of the year, it may take time for it to be compatible on all the applications and platforms available. To find out if your browser supports JPEG XL, you can check here. Those interested in the coding system can check out the white paper.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Turn On: Backwards Glances From Famous Monuments

24 Jul

[ By Steve in Drawing & Digital. ]

Photographer Captures The World's Greatest Monuments - The Wrong Way Round

Photographer Oliver Curtis turns his back on some of the world’s most famous monuments, capturing a wholly unexpected side to these familiar cultural icons.

Photographer Captures The World's Greatest Monuments - The Wrong Way Round

If life is a journey and not a destination (to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson), then the ideal photographer to document the trip would be Oliver Curtis. In his Royal Geographical Society exhibition aptly titled “Volte-face”, Curtis visits the world’s most famous monuments and evocative locations… and then turns 180-degrees, snapping the polar opposite of what visitors have come from across the globe to see! The results are often enlightening in their own right, as the above views from the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing, China’s Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu illustrate.

American Dreaming

Photographer Captures The World's Greatest Monuments - The Wrong Way Round

Curtis’ odd odyssey unfolded over a period of four years and involved a staggering amount of travel – one would hope he’d enrolled in a frequent flyer program beforehand. From start to finish, however, Curtis never lost sight of his mission “to send our gaze elsewhere and to favor the incidental over the monumental.” The photo above, taken at the White House on a perfect summer’s day, epitomizes his curious yet enlightening vision quest.

Let My People Golf

volte-face_pyramids-giza-egypt

Curtis was inspired to record “counter-views” of the world’s most-photographed places in 2012, while visiting the Pyramids of Giza. Finding an ideal spot to capture the Great Pyramid of Khufu – the largest of the three main pyramids – Curtis glanced back in the direction from which he had came… and one might say he never looked back, er, sort of. “Immediately in front of me and under my feet,” explains Curtis, “the sand of the desert was adorned with an assortment of human detritus; litter, pieces of rusted metal, a large rubber washer and a torn hessian sack. Then, in the mid-distance I saw a newly constructed golf course, its fairways an intense green under the late morning sun.”

Acropolis Now

volte-face_parthenon-athens-greece

“I found this visual sandwich of contrasting colour, texture and form intriguing not simply for the photograph it made but also because of the oddness of my position;” adds Curtis, “standing at one of the great wonders of the world facing the ‘wrong’ way.” Though the locations may differ (that’s the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, above), Curtis’ photographic subjects evoke certain similarities due to they’re being cheek-by-jowl to greatness. Take the white stone bench in the image above: if you didn’t know it shared real estate with one of the world’s most iconic structures, it would seem perfectly at home in most any suburban garden.

Kodak Moment

Photographer Captures The World's Greatest Monuments - The Wrong Way Round

In a world too-often suffused with the profane, these photographs provide a refreshing atmosphere of the mundane by being the antitheses of the associated famous construction. This works on a number of levels: no doubt Lenin would spin in his tomb if he knew a Kodak kiosk was conducting capitalism just outside!

The Rio Thing

Photographer Captures The World's Greatest Monuments - The Wrong Way Round

Far from being overshadowed or perhaps because of it, these images display a subtle narrative all their own. Indeed, these reverse-views spotlight actual locales where workers and random folks display a palpable lack of awe; the consequence of daily exposure (or over-exposure, more likely) to what the rest of the world has put on a pedestal. Speaking of which, the trio above appear oblivious to Rio de Janeiro’s enormous Christ the Redeemer statue looming over them.