Benchmarking JPEG XL image compression

JPEG XL is a practical, royalty-free codec for scalable web distribution and efficient compression of high-quality photographs. It also includes previews, progressiveness, animation, transparency, high dynamic range, wide color gamut, and high bit depth. Users expect faithful reproductions of ever higher-resolution images. Experiments performed during standardization have shown the feasibility of economical storage without perceptible quality loss, lossless transcoding of existing JPEG, and fast software encoders and decoders. We analyse the results of subjective and objective evaluations versus existing codecs including HEVC and JPEG. New image codecs have to co-exist with their previous generations for several years. JPEG XL is unique in providing value for both existing JPEGs as well as new users. It includes coding tools to reduce the transmission and storage costs of JPEG by 22% while allowing byte-for-byte exact reconstruction of the original JPEG. Avoiding transcoding and additional artifacts helps to preserve our digital heritage. Applications require fast and low-power decoding. JPEG XL was designed to benefit from multicore and SIMD, and actually decodes faster than JPEG. We report the resulting speeds on ARM and x86 CPUs. To enable reproduction of these results, we open sourced the JPEG XL software in 2019.