JPEG XL: What It Is And Why You Should Care

JPEG XL is a new-generation image file format that recently got a big boost to awareness thanks to native support in the iPhone 16 series smartphones. So what is it, why does it matter, and why should you use it? Who better to ask than one of the people who helped make it a reality?

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This week on The PetaPixel Podcast, Chris Niccolls, Jordan Drake, and I are joined by Jon Sneyers, the Senior Image Researcher at Cloudinary, Editor of the JPEG XL standard, and contributor to the reference implementation of the format that is being used by Apple and Adobe. He covers a lot about the format, its use cases, and why he thinks it’s a big step forward for photographers.

“JPEG XL is a new image format that was designed to be a still image format in contrast to some other new image formats like HEIC, AVIF, and webp that originate from video codecs, where then a single frame is used as a still image format,” Jon explains.

Of course, the name carries with it the expectations and burdens that have existed for decades with JPEG. Simply because the word “JPEG” is part of it, some may immediately associate it with the original 8-bit lossy image file that fixes colors to a single output and has terrible dynamic range by today’s standards. JPEG was great back in the 1990s, but Sneyers says a lot of progress has been made in compression research that has allowed JPEG XL files to be significantly more robust.

“JPEG XL was really designed from the start for still images. So it’s also designed for the entire workflow, the whole altering workflow from capture to delivery and not just zooming in on that final part of delivery only as some other codecs do. Those may focus is on web quality, but for JPEG XL, it’s the entire workflow,” Sneyers says. “Therefore, lossless is a big part of it, which is of course important during production, but also very high fidelity lossy, which can also be useful in production or in archival or in many other scenarios where maybe fully lossless is not necessary, but you do need a very good fidelity.”

JPEG XL gives photographers the flexibility to either use the file directly out of camera as-is and share that quickly without having to do any conversions like they would if it were a RAW file. At the same time, sould more editing be desired, a JPEG XL has all the RAW data too, so it opens in an editor like Lightroom or Photoshop as if it were a DNG RAW file. It’s the best of both worlds.

“I think the biggest difference between JPEG XL and the old JPEG is the precision you can achieve with dynamic range. So de facto, the old JPEG is limited to 8-bit, and I think this is becoming more and more of a big limitation almost in the same way that the limitation of the GIF format to have only 256 colors is an obvious limitation,” Sneyers continues. “Most screens nowadays, or many screens at least, are 10 bit, and of course, cameras have an internal precision of typically 12 bit, 14 bit, or more. So squeezing that down into the standard dynamic range and using the old JPEG is just not good enough.”

The biggest benefit of JPEG XL would be the ability to combine the preview file, a traditional JPEG, with the RAW into a single file. The concept of “JPEG+RAW” would be obsolete, as a single JPEG XL can do both. Sneyers agrees.

“I don’t think there will be a need in the future to have multiple versions of the same image,” he says. “You could have a single image that is basically a very good quality image and that can be used both for interchange and for production.”

Another aspect of the format that will appeal to photographers is that it’s got outstanding compression.

“The difference between JPEG XL and the old JPEG is, well, I would say 50% at least, that you can reduce [the size of the file and get] the same quality,” Sneyers says.

Practically speaking, supporting JPEG XL would allow a camera maker to dramatically improve burst rate performance. If not straight-up frames per second, then absolutely length of a burst as JPEG XL would make substantial improvements to how fast data could be written to a memory card since each photo file is so much smaller.

JPEG XL is an international standard that has all the pieces in place for immediate support.

“The whole point of an international standard is to have interoperability and to define in a specification how the file format works so that if you implement it, you implement it and it’s self-contained in that way. So once someone properly adds JPEG XL support — and it supports all its features — then it’s done,” Sneyers says.

While support is already landing on smartphones like Apple’s iPhone 16, standalone cameras have been slow or unwilling to use open RAW standards thus far — all brands could have switched over to DNG years ago, but most have not — there isn’t likely a technical reason why it couldn’t be done. All the metadata that Canon, Nikon, or Sony would want to pack into a RAW can be done with an open standard like DNG, and Sneyers says that remains the case with JPEG XL, but this time with more benefits and advantages.

“I think at least it should be possible to have to use JPEG XL in a way that the main image data, including the color space description and whatnot, is decodable on any implementation,” he says, referring to the ability to add JPEG XL into standalone cameras.

“Nothing prevents somebody from using JPEG XL as a payload codec in a proprietary format either,” he says. That would mean, for example, Canon taking the CR3 RAW file and replacing DNG with it in a JPEG XL file.

“I hope it won’t happen [like that though], because I think the JPEG XL format or using DNG with JPEG XL as a payload is flexible enough to work for any use case. So I don’t see any technical reason for not just doing that,” he adds.

The full interview with Sneyers can be listened to above or on YouTube, YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any podcasting app.

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We hope you enjoy the podcast and we look forward to hearing what you think. If you like what you hear, please support us by subscribing, liking, commenting, and reviewing! Every week, the trio go over comments on YouTube and here on PetaPixel, but if you’d like to send a message for them to hear, you can do so through SpeakPipe.

In This Episode

• 00:00 – Intro (favorite aliens, squids, and more)
• 10:08 – A new Tamron 90mm for Nikon Z and Sony E
• 12:46 – Canon Listened, will update R5 II to capture 24p video with older batteries
• 16:17 – Phase One has a new XC with a new 40mm, can be purchased without the digital back
• 18:01 – ProGrade digital finally released its first portable SSD and it’s very good
• 21:00 – Yes, you can buy the cable by itself
• 21:13 – Live your Death Stranding dreams with the Lancer300
• 26:08 – JPEG XL explained by Senior Image Researcher and JPEG XL reference standard editor Jon Sneyers
• 1:01:42 – What have you been up to? (how good is Chris’s light metering with his eyes?)
• 1:08:44 – Tech support

Image credits: JPEG XL