Exporting JPEG XL needs option to embed photo metadata

[Rafael Brucart]

A large goal and purpose of JPEG XL is to provide a more efficient and flexible file format for photographers. At this time Affinity does not support the metadata in this format.

Without metadata photographers like myself cannot utilize the format because contained in metadata is very important camera info, lenses, exposure info, and gps location.

It would be great to have this implemented. In an export test I took a RAW photo of 28mb and converted it to a lossless 16bit jxl of 3.5mb, that is 7 times smaller, at raw color bitrate, and no loss of quality. In other words I could reduce my photo library around 87 percent with no loss in quality and high fidelity, EXCEPT I cannot give up the 1kb per photo of metadata.

I hope it is implemented, I cannot imagine it being a difficult process.

[iY8Zaj4B]

Absolutely yes .. with my new camera, going for jpegs isn't an option anymore for full quality, and I was shocked about the lack of metadata ... sometimes it is really helpful to get information about the used lense or settings ....

[lizardpeter]

JPEG-XL needs full support. It is now supported on MacOS, Windows, and Linux natively. It works in Safari, and Chrome and Firefox likely have decoders coming fairly soon. Unfortunately, I have found far too many issues with its export in Affinity Photo 2 (lost metadata, HDR not working, no lossless option, etc) to make it viable with this program. I hope they are able to fix these things ASAP.

[Petar Petrenko]

On 6/21/2025 at 9:28 PM, lizardpeter said:

JPEG-XL needs full support.

Yes, it is so flexible that it can replace .PSD, .TIF, .JPG... due to its excellent lossless compression, support for layers, and so on.