Affinity Photo 2: AVIF Support??

[Brad Studio]

Does ChatGPT know something we don't know? 

I get a "File not supported" error when trying to open an AVIF file.

After reading up on AVIF, I'm at a loss why everyone isn't racing to built-in support for this wonderful new format.

When can we expect this to be added to AP2? 

[Ron P.]

😄 That clearly demonstrates you can't believe everything you read or see on the internet. No, AP does not support AVIF, and Serif has not said if it will. Furthermore, Serif's policy is they do not release any timeline of when a feature may be included.

[Pšenda]

... and it certainly doesn't rush into supporting all those new and wondrous formats whose awesomeness often wears off eventually.

P.S. The fact, that ChatGPT has not yet registered that APhoto is also available on other platforms (Win and iPad) also says something about its information qualities 🙂

[_Th]

Just as an aside, ChatGPT will boldly and cheerfully straight up lie to you.

I've been using it regularly for quite some time, and this, um, behavior has been repeated many times. Even if you ask it to double check or verify the info, it regularly says, "Yes, I'm certain that is correct." Once I asked for sources for information that I knew was false. It said, "Sure, here you go..." and proceeded to give me four links to it's "sources." All of them were live websites; all of them said, "Page not found." When I said the links weren't live, ChatGPT politely said, "I'm sorry for the mistake. Here are the correct links." And four more links, exact same result. Checking the internet archive, there was no record the pages ever existed, and the information was definitely false.

AI is an amazing, and amazingly-scary, technology. For me, I'll never trust its information 100%. Ever.

[Brad Studio]

I was excited to see the updates today, then immediately disappointed to see AVIF export is not included yet, considering over 70% of browsers can view AVIF but can't display JPEG XL, which is a useless format currently.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Brad Studio said:

but can't display JPEG XL, which is a useless format currently.

I know very little about this but from https://caniuse.com/avif it appears that JPEG XL is generally considered to be more feature rich than AVIF.

[sacb0y]

On 5/18/2023 at 7:35 PM, R C-R said:

JPEG XL is generally considered to be more feature rich than AVIF.

AVIF is MUCH smaller though, a AVIF is a small fraction of the sized compared JPEG XL.

[ATP]

On 6/21/2023 at 3:15 PM, sacb0y said:

AVIF is MUCH smaller though, a AVIF is a small fraction of the sized compared JPEG XL.

This is not true, see this linked post.

[Max Rockbin]

It would be a big advantage vs Photoshop if Affinity supported AVIF.

 

If you're making websites, AVIF is now pretty much a required technology.  Try running Chrome Dev tool performance tests on a site without AVIF.   

And no, Webp is NOT an alternative.  Just try compressing a photo to webp and then with avif.  Avif is vastly superior compression. Way smaller files. Often several times smaller.  (webp is often worse than JPEG!) Sometimes AVIF is 10x smaller.   And JPEG XL is just not available anywhere.  Check it out:  https://caniuse.com/jpegxl   1/30th of 1% of browsers support it globally.  Compare to AVIF with 85% global support and 92.5% on mobile (which is more important to me, since 75% of my visitors are mobile).

SO PLEASE - support AVIF already and I'll buy the Affinity package and be happy!

I've attached a webp 47kb image and the same as a 31kb AVIF.  Same source.   I used photoshop to save the webp and imagemagick to make the avif.

I only discovered Affinity photo because I was getting tired of using imagemagick on save as avif.  You get no previews to compare compression levels or other options.  Just trial and error.   You need to do this every time you want to save an image:    magick -define heic:speed=0  -define heic:chroma=422  -define heic:tune=vmaf  -quality 21 pic-orginal.png  pic-compressed.avif   

Imagemagick is fast (uses GPUs and multiple cores), but AVIF is a computation heavy format.   You can compromise quality for speed, but that's a hard decision to make.  Without previews though, discovering the right settings is painful.  So - Serif/Affinity - hear the cries of your users!  Support AVIF!

(From my attachments - it looks like even this Affinity Forum refuses to support AVIF)

2552 savier 002-Enhanced-NRsmall-squoosh37.avif

[cirkē]

Why is JXL supported and not AVIF ?

JXL is 2 or 3 times heavier than AVIF 

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, cirkē said:

Why is JXL supported and not AVIF ?

JXL is 2 or 3 times heavier than AVIF 

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XL,

Quote

The standard is expected to outperform the still image compression performance shown by HEIC, AVIF, WebP, and JPEG 2000.

Not sure what is meant there by "outperform" though.

[ATP]

1 hour ago, cirkē said:

Why is JXL supported and not AVIF ?

JXL is 2 or 3 times heavier than AVIF 

Please check real tests and comparisons before posting misinformation.

[cirkē]

3 minutes ago, ATP said:

Please check real tests and comparisons before posting misinformation.

I have converted about 250 png (many times different settings)  into , JPG ,AVIF, WEBP JXL , JXL is definitely not interesting fo internet even with more compression it's much more heavy than AVIF 

before opening your mouth do your own tests

[ATP]

You're either doing something wrong or choosing a very low quality target. Trust me, I know what I'm doing

Affinity doesn't help by having a bad implementation though, file sizes always seem high for some reason.

[cirkē]

there is nothing wrong to do , converting is easy, avif is definitively the best format, i have tried all kind of compression s and AVIF is always better

[ATP]

Here we go with the misinformation again.

[cirkē]

5 minutes ago, ATP said:

Here we go with the misinformation again.

take a png and convert it into WEBP JPG JXL AVIF and you will see by your own, even with more. compression JXL is heavier 

and stop talking nonsense

[Graymatter]

Regardless of @ATP 's objections, I also find the AVIF format a valuable addition to web development.

One typical example image I'm looking at right now... Original JPG = 17KB, WEBP = 10KB, AVIF = 4KB.

I just now converted the same JPG image to JXL using Affinity Photo 2.2.0.  The JXL size = 28KB.  Go figure!

But this is all moot.  The reality is that the only browser supporting JXL is Safari 17.0, which was only released September 26 this year - less than a month ago.  Firefox and Opera have had JXL behind a flag for more than two years, and Chromium browsers don't even have that.

See https://caniuse.com/jpegxl

In comparison, AVIF has wide adoption.  In some cases (Chrome) dating back more than three years.

See https://caniuse.com/avif

So, it would seem that AVIF is not a "new and wondrous formats whose awesomeness often wears off eventually" as @Pšenda suggested. 

 

Conclusion: For web development, JXL is currently of no value and looks like remaining so for some time.  The AVIF format is useful and beneficial right now.

Serif, please add the ability to import and export AVIF images.

[Pšenda]

8 hours ago, Tony Gray said:

as @Pšenda suggested

Since you apparently didn't understand my post well, I'll just clarify that I'm not "suggesting" anything, I'm just "stating" how I perceive Serif's attitude towards the implementation and introduction of new export and import formats. Which can be judged both from the reactions of the moderators here on the forum, and from the speed of introducing new formats.

 

8 hours ago, Tony Gray said:

Conclusion: For web development, JXL is currently of no value

The problem may be that the main/primary purpose of ASuite apps is apparently not web design (again, judging from the approach to web design application development requirements, despite Serif previously having WebPlus). Therefore, I would probably look for the reason for implementing JPEG XL in its usability for photographers.

[Graymatter]

On 10/17/2023 at 11:10 PM, Pšenda said:

Since you apparently...  blah blah blah...

 

@Pšenda can pontificate all he/she/they want.  For reasons already stated, we need AVIF support.  And there is no shortage of people requesting it.  See Showing results for 'AVIF'. - Affinity | Forum (serif.com)

Serif, please add the ability to import and export AVIF images.

[MacHeritage]

Serif, I am adding my voice as well. Please support AVIF in Affinity Photo!

[thehomme]

Another vote for avif support. Really disappointing that the first real world thing I try and do with Affinity (in trying to move away from PS ) has failed. 

 

[Brad Studio]

I'm saving a lot of images from Google Image Search and finding they're AVIF, and I can't open them in Affinity Photo 2. Meanwhile, Adobe has integrated generative AI that can do all kinds of mad wizardry to create mind-blowing images just by typing text.

It's time for Serif to stop slacking off and catch up before that quiet sucking sound becomes a full-blown vacuum of losing all its users back to Adobe.

 

[thehomme]

Whoh there cowboy! Have you actually used Firefly? It's pretty iffy and if all you're gonna do is use AI to generate images then you're not really adding any value. As far as I can tell PS also doesn't support avif. Although there's supposed to be a plugin I get a 404 clicking the download link. 

The reason big software fails is cos it gets too bloated and adds superfluous features instead of focusing on core workflow and improvements. If you compare AE and Premiere to something like Resolve you can see why Adobe is sinking. I have a terrible feeling they'll ruin Figma

[StargateCOlorado]

As best I can tell, Photoshop now supports AVIF ... sort of.

It will load AVIF files via Camera RAW 16.0 and pass them into PS.  However, I can't find a path within PS to save it as an AVIF.  Can't exactly take advantage of AVIF's compression capabilities. 😞