AVIF Support Please

[jkm]

When will PM support AVIF?

It is the absolute best image format there is today, supported by 95% of browsers, the only viable replacement for JPEG (second place option has only 13% support at most), better performance than HEIF, etc., etc.

I'm attaching just one screenshot of thousands of experiments done by researchers on massive image set sets. All the results point towards AVIF as being far higher quality with far less decoding time and much smaller file sizes than any other option (JPEG XL is in a very distant second place, WebP in third, and JPEG is not even on the map).

I am probably going to cancel my subscription if it is not supported.

I cannot even read my own companies files now, which started using AVIF officially in August.

For me, Photo Mechanic is obsolete if it doesn't not become part of the 95% that supports AVIF, like most modern software has done since 2023.

[jkm]

Here's a comparison I made with JPEG, JXL, WebP, and AVIF image formats at their highest possible quality settings and most efficient settings (like "optimize" for JPEG).

The quality advantage of AVIF is literally stunning at all compression levels, plus it supports HDR, too, which two of the other three do not.

Please at least allow AVIF files to be read by PM, if not exported, too.

AVIF is also much better than HEIF/HEIC, but I could only compare four.

[Kirk Baker]

Here's a comparison I made with JPEG, JXL, WebP, and AVIF image formats at their highest possible quality settings and most efficient settings (like "optimize" for JPEG).

The quality advantage of AVIF is literally stunning at all compression levels, plus it supports HDR, too, which two of the other three do not.

Please at least allow AVIF files to be read by PM, if not exported, too.

AVIF is also much better than HEIF/HEIC, but I could only compare four.

No need to continue.  I have a read-only handler in the works.  It needs more testing so it didn't make it into the 9024 build.

-Kirk

[jkm]

Thank you so, so much!!!! This makes my day!!!

[jkm]

Take a look at the comparison video anyway, though. The visual difference is very impressive, more so than I ever expected.

[jkm]

This is a screenshot from the end of the comparison.

AVIF still looks almost normal image quality at the same file size where the other formats hit their lowest file size possible with horrible image quality.