Improvements to the ubiquitous JPEG image format used across the internet will bring global bandwidth savings of 30 per cent, say the creators of the new technology, who have made it royalty-free.
The JPEG format allows digital photographs to be compressed so that they can be stored using less data. It kick-started the proliferation of images across the internet, although the technology behind it dates back to work done in the 1980s. An updated version called JPEG XL reduces file sizes from the current format by 50 per cent and improves image quality at the same time.
at the University of Beira Interior in Portugal, who also works on the Joint Photographic Experts Group that manages the JPEG standards, says the original file type is ageing technology and that the new standard represents the state of the art in data compression.
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With JPEG XL you will be able to convert old JPEGs without losing any quality, but reduce the file size by at least 15 per cent. New photographs taken in the format will be less than half the current size in some cases.
Although hard disc capacity, memory chips and internet speeds have all improved dramatically since the introduction of the original JPEG standard, compression is still needed or transfer times quickly bloat to an unusable extent, says Pinheiro. JPEG XL will retain the ability to scale the compression up or down to taste, including an option for completely lossless version, in which all original data can be recovered and which is often requested by scientists and medical professionals.
鈥淪ometimes in some kinds of medical imaging or astronomy we cannot lose the texture, because professionals can use those textures to extract information, although we cannot see it,鈥� says Pinheiro. 鈥淭hey can detect these patterns because they are so trained to detect them. If you compress an image, some bad diagnosis can happen.鈥�
JPEG XL will also support new features that future-proof it for decades to come, such as allowing images of more than a billion pixels, animation and encoding that doesn鈥檛 require specialised hardware. The team behind the new standard hope that it will replace JPEG, PNG and GIF to become a universal image format for the web.
In the case of JPEG XL, much of the technology can be traced back to work done by US technology firms Google and Cloudinary, and the companies have given away the rights to the technology so that it can be used for free.
at Cloudinary says that a 50 per cent reduction in file size from current JPEG standards is possible and that current webpages devote up to 60 per cent of data to images, meaning that up to 25 to 30 per cent of the world鈥檚 bandwidth requirements could be cut.
鈥淔or something like Facebook or Google Photos, which basically archives everybody鈥檚 photos, it鈥檚 a huge deal,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 trillions of images and photos getting created every year now.鈥�
Sneyers says that adoption is almost a political issue, in that companies may have their own file formats that are subject to royalties that they would like to see adopted as standards, and that very few software packages currently support JPEG XL. 鈥淥nce we have support in at least a big chunk of the [internet] browsers, the companies like Facebook will probably start deploying quite quickly and others will follow,鈥� he says.
