by LOZ BLAIN
French programmer
Fabrice Bellard has come up with a graphics file format he believes can "
replace the JPEG image format." Bellard's
BPG (
Better Portable Graphics) format boasts a compelling quality advantage over
JPG, particularly when images are heavily compressed.
The
BPG files seem to hold up vastly better, demonstrating a lot less color banding, blocking and step-ladder aliasing along edges, and producing pleasing images down to surprisingly small sizes.
BPG files can also handle transparency, which
JPEG files can't – although
GIF and
PNG files can, and those are both supported by most Web browsers. Currently,
BPG files require a 55 kilobyte
Javascript decoder to be embedded in a website before they can be displayed.
Is
BPG likely to take over as a successor to
JPEG? There's a few factors running up against it. In the most simple sense,
JPG is more or less doing a good enough job. Designers are comfortable with using it online, it's well understood, it's supported pretty much everywhere, and internet connections are becoming fast enough that image download times aren't the issue they used to be.
Beyond that,
BPG is built using
HEVC video compression technology that's patented by
MPEG LA – which also owns the
H.264 video codec. As the owners of the
HEVC patents,
MPEG LA would be within its rights to charge royalties on a piece of hardware or software with
BPG decoders built into it, making it a risky move for popular free and open-source web browsers like
Firefox to support the format.
And to compound
BPG's worries, it's competing directly with
Google's up-and-coming
WebP format, which, like
BPG, compresses much better than the
JPEG format and features alpha transparency. But
WebP also handles moving images more efficiently than the
GIF format and, most importantly, it's already supported by the
Chrome and
Opera browsers, with
Google also releasing it under a free
BSD license.
Still, it's cool to watch clever people achieving clever things with software, even if the morass of patent law and commercial considerations do end up leaving
BPG by the wayside.
Source: The decidedly un-graphical
Fabrice Bellard website.