[Clare]

Originally Posted by Tommy Carrot

Thanks for the comparisons.

The new AV1 blurs even more than the older ones. I know it's primarily a video encoder, so it's not really tuned for still images, but in its current form it's not really doing a good job as an image encoder.

However, PIK is really interesting. It basically behaves like a much more efficient JPEG. It has blocking and ringing artifacts, but preserves much more details than the other encoders. I sure prefer it over the artifactless, but sterile looking and blurry AV1 or HEVC images.

I've just stumble onto that on Github: https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/

AV1 Still Image File Format (AVIF)

Overview

AVIF is a file format wrapping compressed images based on the Alliance for Open Media AV1 intra-frame encoding toolkit. AVIF supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG) images as well as standard dynamic range (SDR). Only the intra-frame encoding toolkit is used in AVIF version 1.0. Using the intra-frame encoding mechanism from an existing video codec standard has a precedent in WebP: VP8, and HEIF: HEVC. This document describes at a high level a proposal on the structure of AVIF version 1.0.

The initial version of AVIF seeks to be simple, with just enough structure to allow the distribution of images based on the AV1 intra-frame coding toolset. At its core, AVIF 1.0 will allow for one or more images plus all supporting data needed to correctly reconstruct and display the images to be conveyed in a file. The ability to embed a thumbnail image will also be provided. An image sequence with suggested playback timing may be defined.