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from the just-use-a-photocopier-multiple-times dept.
Google has developed and open-sourced a new JPEG algorithm that reduces file size by about 35 percent—or alternatively, image quality can be significantly improved while keeping file size constant. Importantly, and unlike some of its other efforts in image compression (WebP, WebM), Google's new JPEGs are completely compatible with existing browsers, devices, photo editing apps, and the JPEG standard.
The new JPEG encoder is called Guetzli, which is Swiss German for cookie (the project was led by Google Research's Zurich office). Don't pay too much attention to the name: after extensive analysis, I can't find anything in the Github repository related to cookies or indeed any other baked good.
There are numerous ways of tweaking JPEG image quality and file size, but Guetzli focuses on the quantization stage of compression. Put simply, quantization is a process that tries to reduce a large amount of disordered data, which is hard to compress, into ordered data, which is very easy to compress. In JPEG encoding, this process usually reduces gentle colour gradients to single blocks of colour and often obliterates small details entirely.
The difficult bit is finding a balance between removing detail, and keeping file size down. Every lossy encoder (libjpeg, x264, lame) does it differently.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:55PM (3 children)
I agree with the need for lossless algorithms to be the standard choice.
What baffles me even more is the obsession with using compressed JPEGs in an era of data bloat and excess. In just about every other electronic situation, we see data bloating more and more. From the size of basic desktop applications to the fact that more and more people have entire archives of audio and VIDEOS, as well as worrying about whether their internet speed can handle HQ streaming, why are we still compressing lossy JPEGs on a standard basis?
I'm sure there are still plenty of applications where lossy image compression is still desirable, but unless you're storing millions of photos, why would you want this to be your default? For a typical person's personal photo archive, store better photos in a lossless format and just delete one or two of your HQ downloaded videos or something... and you'll probably have the same amount of space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @12:29AM
Porn. Encrypted volumes. DVD backups.
Next question.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @02:40AM
Dunno, so photographic images on the web download instantly (or without taking excessive bandwidth and time over mobile)?
JPEG is efficient, it is good enough for many requirements, widely adopted and will be here as long as a technological society is. This means it's obsolete next week if the authoritarian left or religious right get their way!
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:21PM
For most people, their "personal photo archive" is Facebook. If you're a professional (or even amateur) photographer, you want those high quality originals, and you ought to know how to change the file format settings on your camera, which any moderately decent camera will have these days (including smartphones). For everyone else, they don't want some massive photo that's too big to email, that's gonna take forever to upload to Facebook, that's going to chew through their mobile data trying to share it with their friends. They don't want to save it to their personal gallery and then convert it and then upload that, they don't even want to HAVE a personal gallery, they want it to go straight from the phone to the cloud. Often over spotty, lower speed mobile networks. And often dealing with email systems that limit attachments to 10-20MB total (while gets you 2-4 photos from a modern smartphone, even with jpeg compression). So if you increase that file size I expect FAR more people will be pissed that they can't share their photos as easily than will be happy about or even *notice* any increased quality. The few who do really want the higher quality can just press a couple buttons to change it.