How JPEG XL Compares to Other Image Codecs
JPEG XL is a next-generation image codec currently being standardized by the JPEG Committee. Based on Google’s PIK codec and Cloudinary’s Free Universal Image Format (FUIF) codec, JPEG XL has created a sum that’s greater than the parts by leveraging the best elements of Google PIK and FUIF:
This section highlights the important features that distinguish JPEG XL from other state-of-the-art image codecs like HEIC and AVIF.
Although they can never make guarantees (patent trolls can always suddenly wake up), the contributors who created JPEG XL have agreed to license the reference implementation under the Apache 2.0 license. That means that, besides being Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), JPEG XL also comes with a royalty-free patent grant.
That’s not at all the case for the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIC), which is based on the HEIF container, on which Nokia claims patents; and the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) codec, which is a complete patent mess. For the AV1 Image File Format (AVIF), the patent situation looks better since it’s based on AV1, and being royalty free was a major goal of the Alliance for Open Media, which created AV1. It is not clear, though, to what extent AV1 is actually royalty free. Moreover, AVIF is based on the HEIF container so Nokia patents might apply as well.
