Hi Kirk, This format will step by step be taken up by not just 75 year old bumbling computer amateurs like me............... Affinity Photo with their release of their major update to V2 will have already been taken up by many many thousands even though it was only released in November this year. Cameras are not so important. It is in Photo processing that this format will gain traction. Your title (with all due respect) is Photo Mechanic Plus. A mechanic from a UK perspective is someone that fixes a problem when they find it during a service of a car etc. Check out IRFANVIEW has already fixed support and got a working PlugIn, (which is a simple download to instal the fix), out for their clients.
When I process my images and use this new format, seriously, I need Photo Mechanic to display the image correctly !!!!!
Below is a section from an article I found quite quickly on the internet.
https://chromeunboxed.com/jxl-jpeg-xl-new-image-file-type-chrome/What is JPEGXL (or .jxl)?
Not simply a modern replacement for the aging JPEG, JPEG XL is a far more compact image file with far more capabilities than the standard JPEG. The full breadth of things that JPEG XL files are capable of is very long and frankly over my head, but I’ll drop a few of the things below that you can expect from JPEG XL as it becomes more and more of a standard file type.
High fidelity to the source image (matches human perception)
Supports alpha transparency
High-speed encoding and decoding
High compression ratio (20:1 to 50:1)
Improved functionality and efficiency over traditional formats
Progressive decoding (by resolution and precision)
Lossless JPEG transcoding
Support for both photographic and synthetic imagery
Graceful quality degradation across an extensive range of bitrates
Perceptually optimized reference encoder
Support for wide gamut and HDR
Support for animated content
Efficient encoding and decoding without requiring specialized hardware
Not only will JPEG XL be faster with better image quality, the files will be smaller and simpler to work with, too. While I don’t understand some of the more-complex decoding/encoding stuff that goes on with images, I can fully appreciate a file format that maintains a better image quality than the standard JPEG while also keeping the file size smaller with a faster encode/decode to go with it. !!!!
Best regards John Edwin in exile in Slovakia.
