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iPhone 16 Pro Supports JPEG-XL Format

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The iPhone 16 Pro models will support the JPEG-XL file format, according to code found in iOS 18. Compared to JPEG, JPEG-XL has improved compression for smaller file sizes.

iphone 16 pro capture button
Apple did not mention JPEG-XL support during today's event, but this feature was rumored ahead of the ‌iPhone 16‌ launch. It appears that the Pro models will support capturing images in JPEG-XL.

Compared to the HEIC format that Apple introduced several years ago, JPEG-XL supports both lossy and lossless compression. HEIC is a lossy format, and while it retains better quality than JPG images, pros will likely prefer JPEG-XL for zero image degradation. HEIC has never gained wide support, which has hindered its usefulness.

HEIC will still be available alongside JPEG, JPEG-XL, and other formats.

Tag: September 2024 Apple Event
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Top Rated Comments

J
Jamie0003
24 months ago
Why does supporting a file format require a new phone?
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
JPack Avatar
JPack
24 months ago

Why does supporting a file format require a new phone?
Same reason why 80% Limit required a new phone. $.
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
maruyama Avatar
maruyama
24 months ago

Why does supporting a file format require a new phone?
It does seem kind of silly, but it might actually be more hardware-related than it would appear at first glance.

HEIC encoding and decoding have almost certainly been hardware-accelerated on the A-series chips ever since Apple adopted the format. I wouldn't be surprised if the encoding part is even baked into the ISP stack at this point. HEIC is a lot more computationally intensive than classic JPEG, so it's both a speed and battery advantage to do that in hardware rather than in software.

Switching to JPEG-XL, which is presumably similar in terms of computation requirements, would then mean Apple needs a hardware-accelerated pipeline for encoding images in that file format, thus tying it to the A18 SoCs.

The alternative would be switching all iPhones on iOS 18 to encoding JPEG-XL on the CPU rather than HEIC on the ISP, and I think the firestorm of criticism for making the camera slower and more battery-intensive on all existing iPhones is something they definitely wanted to avoid. JPEG-gate!
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rotvaldi Avatar
rotvaldi
24 months ago
JPEG XL is a royalty-free raster-graphics file format, it could be easily added on iOS 18 and support all phones, applying only on iPhone 16 is a catch.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kiranmk2 Avatar
kiranmk2
24 months ago

I work customer service and the amount of people who send in HEIC files for compensation claims yet don't know or understand what HEIC is or how it was enabled in the first place is astounding. We regularly have to decline them if they're too tech illiterate to send JPGs.

It's the iTunes Connect of file formats. The world was fine with JPG and RAW.
Sounds like you're not exactly providing a good customer service then if you aren't catering to your customers' needs...
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
R
robgendreau
24 months ago
This article claims it's "very likely" iPhones other than the next generation will get JPEG-XL in the iOS 18 upgrade: https://www.cultofmac.com/news/jpeg-xl-iphone-new-photo-format-explained

One can export to the format from the Lightroom Mobile app in iOS as well.

Great for display HDR; does gain maps. https://gregbenzphotography.com/hdr-photos/jpg-hdr-gain-maps-in-adobe-camera-raw/

I'm glad Apple is getting into it. Safari was one of the first browsers to support it IIRC. HDR looks great on the Apple devices that have higher nits, esp MBPs, etc.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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