Is There a Resonable Image Format?
An image format that is lightweight, efficient while retaining the highest quality possible? especially at low resolutions?
2025-08-17 · 9 months ago
10 Comments ↓
🚀 RubyMaelstrom · 2025-08-17 at 11:21:
I was looking into this recently for my phlog as well.
WEBP is the format with the best quality-to-size ratio that's universally supported by almost everything.
AVIF is even better, producing much smaller file sizes with little loss in quality, but it's a fairly recent format. It's supported by most web browsers but support on gemini may depend on what browser the person is using.
🚀 mbays · 2025-08-17 at 11:38:
I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for, but you might like QOI:
tbh: PNG, but if you're fine with loseless: BPG (and has in-browser js decoder)
https://bellard.org/bpg
Also you didn't mention what's intended use? web? gaming? photography?
👤 0oinwmr2 [OP] · 2025-08-17 at 15:42:
@gim web. so the focus is small size.
🦔 bsj38381 · 2025-08-17 at 15:58:
I would say jpeg, since a PNG gets it's picked counted by the computer. (I personally love PNG and JPEG files)
🚀 stack · 2025-08-17 at 23:48:
A really reasonable common-sense lossless format would be minimal header for x-y resolution followed by 24bpp data compressed with a good and fast open-source compressor. I doubt such a thing exists...
🦂 zzo38 · 2025-08-18 at 04:49:
There is farbfeld, which uses 64-bit pixels (16-bits for each of red, green, blue, alpha), which is not normally compressed, although they suggest using bzip2 if you do want it to be compressed. I think uncompressed farbfeld is useful for piping between programs (I use this a lot when dealing with pictures; decode to farbfeld, apply filters, reencode as other formats), and do not use farbfeld for disk storage at all. However, some people do use compressed farbfeld for disk storage.
🚀 stack · 2025-08-18 at 12:04:
To be fair, 16 bits per color is way too much -- in many if not most cases more than 9 bits of invisible noise, and will likely result in poor lossless compression. Perhaps useful for medical imaging but not much else.
People get carried away thinking they need more bits for quantized images and sound when in reality they need higher quantization rate, or misunderstand gammas and noise.
💎 pista · 2025-08-18 at 13:20:
JPEG is the only thing you will find supported everywhere. I degrade webp to JPEG in my proxy for specifically this reason. There is no webp in my proxy because there is no browser support for it on legacy hardware. On most operating systems for legacy hardware you can’t even view the file if you download it.
You *might* be able to convert the webp to something viewable if you can get a recent version of ImageMagick working on the OS.
But in general you need a relatively recent Windows/Linux/OSX to use webp. It’s off limits for legacy operating systems and most alternative operating systems. I’m not even sure the latest Wayfarer browser on Amiga/MorphOS can do webp. ArcaOS might do it depending on the version of Firefox they are using. QNX, no hope.
🚀 LucasMW · 2025-08-18 at 19:45:
If you are looking for a somewhat simple implementation, you can check qoi, but it is a new format, therefore not supported by much things. However, source is small