Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

New export file formats (JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP)


Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, popster said:

wouldn't be a very difficult rewrite for someone who knows their stuff

Affinity Photo doesn't support file import/export plugins at this time, so it would need to be done by Serif and integrated into the product, at least unless/until that changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
  • 3 months later...

Seeing that this post was started 2 years ago and still not implemented:

I am in web development and am looking to optimize images. I went to the Can I Use It as listed above and I think I understand the hesitancy of Serif to invest resources to implement this. Currently it appears as though WebP format is the best choice.

However, in it's description you find:

 

Quote

AVIF and JPEG XL are designed to supersede WebP.

And these are not supported very well yet. As soon as you get one top choice everyone else tries to be the new top choice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Webp is supported by most browsers. JPEG XL are supported by NONE.

I would not hold my breath based on this information and stick to using WebP which is dramatically better than PNG, JPG and other current formats.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

There is this comment from 2019, where Andy Somerfield explains that they don't like adding a feature that they are not sure it will be useful in the future. He also mentions here that they planed to include it in version 1.9.

Not that I would have the skills to do it, but wouldn't be better to approach export support for exotic formats with a plugin? This way the Affinity team would not be bound to support it as part of the entire package. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Fixx said:

I think there is no software architecture in AP to support export plugins (yet).

Serif PhotoPlus was developed for more than fifteen years but only ever supported effects plugins. I very much doubt that we’ll see support for export, acquisition, automation, or file format plugins in Affinity Photo any time soon.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a recent purchaser updating from a long history (~15 years) with Photo Plus and many other Serif products, thanks for pointing our another retrograde step from the now discontinued Plus product line.  All three of these formats, requested two years ago were available in Photo Plus X8 (see attached screen shot of the export menu in Ph+X8).

The lack of a way to create a tiled display of images as in all the Ph+ versions I can recall, is also a disturbing down-grade in the new product.  How on earth can one quickly make comparisons between the shots taken in a burst without being able to tile the images quickly (it has been confirmed by a long term user of Affinity Photo that this can be accomplished only by manually re-sizing and dragging each individual image, what a drag).  Moreover, in Ph+, once tiled (with just two clicks) the images may all be zoomed, and hence panned, simultaneously.

Mr. Connor, this product is no improvement over Ph+8: I'll be using my "out-dated"  Ph+ for quite a bit longer, thanks.

 

ExportOptionsInPhotoPlus.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@JonBowen Your latest post in this thread seems to be two mostly-unrelated pieces of feedback: 1. Extra export formats. 2. Image tiling.
If you want the image tiling feedback to be seen by more people, you might want to create a new thread for just that, otherwise it may just get lost in a thread which isn’t related to it. (Search for an existing thread first to see if one exists before making a new one.)

P.S. The Publisher Data Merge functionality might help you with the image tiling thing but I’ve not used Photo Plus so I don’t know how it works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Astonishing that adding WebP support is in any way controversial.

The simple fact is: the web needs a lossy compression standard with support for alpha. PNG is not lossy. JPEG doesn't do alpha.

I've been a web developer for over twenty-five years now. I am about as pro-open-standards and anti-FAANG as they come. Of course I would prefer to be using JPEG-2000 or something whose patents have expired (if in fact they even have). I thought this would be a solved problem by 2008. Then I thought it would be solved by 2012. Then… look, it's just not going to happen.

Apple gave up and embraced WebP. I don't like the fact that it won, but it did. If Serif disagrees, I guess that's one more reason to seek alternatives.

Edited by Eric_WVGG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Basically I can write a picture tag as per:

<picture>
  <source srcset="img/image.webp" type="image/webp">
  <source srcset="img/image.jp2" type="image/jp2">
  <img src="img/image.png" alt="woof">
</picture>

But also it's also just a matter of time until you upgrade. I would wager you're not going to be on Catalina in 2030, and I've been in this business long enough to care about the long game..

Edited by Eric_WVGG
clarification
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We're not talking about what Monterey offers today (it's great, btw), but what is going to happen over the next eight years.

Running Catalina in 2030, at which point it would be eleven years old, would be roughly equivalent to running Snow Leopard today. Like, I dunno, maybe you'll bail on MacOS in favor of Windows or Ubuntu or iOS, maybe MacOS won't exist at all by then. But I'd wager that whatever you do, you'll have a WebP-compatible browser someday.

Edited by Eric_WVGG
left out word
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Eric_WVGG said:

you'll have a WebP-compatible browser someday.

What ever happened to PCX?

Hard to be sure that any particular format will ever catch on all that well - and that one actually did, but you never really hear about it today.

Even EPS and PostScript itself are slowly dying in favor of PDF.

It is not particularly clear that WebP really has caught on just yet (https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/im-webp and https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/image_format); while its use is increasing, it is still only by a small percentage of sampled sites.

AVIF seems like the better long-term option between the two; it is supported by several major browsers and its use in various sites is also growing, though slowly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
On 4/27/2019 at 10:35 AM, Fixx said:

Safari does not support JPEG XR or WebP. You should use supported file formats.

That's a naive argument. Developers should always advocate for superior solutions. Apple's inability to keep up with standards is a ridiculous reason to not support those standards. Same with Microsoft and Internet Explorer when that was an issue.

Website development tools all have failover features, often put in place for browsers failing to keep up with emerging standards. First the capability is provided, demand and support follows. It's always been that way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Michael Lloyd said:

Developers should always advocate for superior solutions.

Betamax vs VHS? Betamax may have been superior, but was not mass-market.

8 hours ago, Michael Lloyd said:

First the capability is provided, demand and support follows. It's always been that way.

Although webp is widely supported in browsers, it is apparently only in use by ~3% of web sites (according to W3Techs: https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/im-webp). In other words there doesn't seem to be a huge demand for this supposedly better format. Demand has not followed capability.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/19/2021 at 5:42 AM, LondonSquirrel said:

In other words there doesn't seem to be a huge demand for this supposedly better format. Demand has not followed capability.

The main issue is that "industry standard" design and animation software still do not support the export of webp. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation.

Luckily the situation is changing: Krita 5 supports both APNG and animated WebP files, as does PhotoLine. Plugins exist for Photoshop to do the same.

And WebP is gaining popularity. Simply stated: things are possible with WebP that are not possible with (A)PNG or other file formats or coded solutions that eat up much more bandwidth. This has an impact on the user experience from both the perspective of load times as well as eye-candy, and as such, it is steadfastly growing.

As a large web-based business you'd be plain losing money on bandwidth if you keep ignoring webp.

@LondonSquirrel You seem to ignore the fact that the uptake of webp grew by 600% in 2021 only, and that it is the most popular image file format now with high traffic sites. I interpret those figures as a NEED to support WebP export rather sooner than later. The context of that 3% tells a very different story in my opinion.

And it is not only a useful format for the web: game engines support this format now as well. It is an effective and flexible image file format - the only one that supports a superset of all the other graphic file formats: both lossy and non-lossy, full alpha, animation, EXIF/ICC Profile/XMP support,...

Nope, everything indicates that the use of webp will only grow and grow. It is very, very dumb on the part of the Serif devs to keep ignoring webp. I mean, they are behind: animated PNG and WebP support is growing, and Affinity can't even export a static WebP file.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BTW Betamax vs VHS, it was the porn industry that made VHS the winner. I wonder when (not if) they will want to reduce their environmental footprint and move everything to WebP. That will put pressure on Apple to update Safari and might have an impact on Serif too. Fingers crossed! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

it is the most popular image file format now with high traffic sites.

YouTube thumbnails are JPG. That's a high traffic site.

I picked half a dozen items at random on Amazon, the items are JPGs.

Google's doodle is a GIF (even though webp was invented at Google).

I think that you need to back up your statement. I don't doubt that webp is useful to some people, but apparently 3% of web sites use it. 97% therefore do without it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.