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PNG is back! (www.programmax.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/programming@programming.dev/t/1528736

After 20 years, PNG is back with renewed vigor! A new PNG spec was just released.

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[–] 17 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

The title is hyperbole. PNG is lagging behind modern lossless formats in terms of new features.
This doesn't mean it's a bad format or that it shouldn't be used. In fact, it should still be the default unless you need something it doesn't support or really need to reduce file size.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    In fact, it should still be the default unless you need something it doesn’t support or really need to reduce file size.

    I disagree. It is wasteful (we're talking ~30% savings with lossless WebP or JPEG-XL) and widely misused, which matters at the massive scale of the Internet with technically inexperienced people making up plenty of those images.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    Congratulations, your noob user is now using JPEG-XL. It's not working on old devices, or any mainstream browser besides Safari. The less mature library also has a bug that allows for RCE and now everyone is running a cryptominer.

    Now you say, but webp is supported everywhere, so let's go with that. Now the noob is using wepb for a bunch of rasterised vector graphics with 4 or 5 flat colors, and he's wasting more disk space than before.

    So I repeat, if you need one size fits all, PNG is better, it works everywhere, and it's even more efficient in cases where lossless graphics matter the most.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Now the noob is using wepb for a bunch of rasterised vector graphics with 4 or 5 flat colors, and he’s wasting more disk space than before.

    I just tested with this image:

    Default GIMP WebP export settings (90% quality): 88.8 kB

    Lossless WebP mode: 85.6 kB

    Default GIMP PNG export settings (compression level 9): 189.8 kB

    So I don't trust this claim unless you have some evidence.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    It's ironic how WebP lossless mode is actually better at compressing the image than the lossy mode.

    I bet most people would use the default thinking that they are making a compromise and that increasing the quality would make the compression worse. They wouldn't know unless they tested making the images themselves, because it's not easy for users to differentiate lossy webp from lossless webp.

    This imho is why lossless should be in its own format, instead of trying to make a single container format do everything like WebP was trying. A new compression level for PNG would be most welcome.

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