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A new PNG spec

(www.programmax.net)
615 points bluedel | 8 comments | 24 Jun 25 13:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.392s | source | bottom
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poisonborz ◴[25 Jun 25 10:11 UTC] No.44375523[source]▶
Not backwards compatible. We just add it to that nice cupboard "great advanced image formats we will forget about".

Society doesn't need a new image format. I'd wager to say not any new multimedia format. Big corporate entites do, and have churning them out at a steady pace.

Look at poor webp - a format pushed by the largest industry players - and the abysmal everyday use it gets, and the hate it generates.

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michaelmior ◴[25 Jun 25 10:13 UTC] No.44375537[source]▶
> and the abysmal everyday use it gets

Estimates are that 95% of Internet users have a browser that supports WebP and that ~25% of the top million websites serve WebP images. I wouldn't call that abysmal.

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1. AlienRobot ◴[25 Jun 25 11:33 UTC] No.44376063[source]▶
You can't even upload webp to instagram.
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2. bastawhiz ◴[25 Jun 25 11:36 UTC] No.44376087[source]▶
Which makes sense for an app made for photos: why would you capture a photograph to disk in a format made for distributing on the web?
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3. jdiff ◴[25 Jun 25 11:38 UTC] No.44376106[source]▶
Indeed, why might one upload a photo to the web in a format made for distributing images on the web?
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4. Sharlin ◴[25 Jun 25 12:42 UTC] No.44376630[source]▶
Instagram hasn't even been primarily or even secondarily about photos for a long time. Indeed trying to "just" upload a photo is made super inconvenient these days.
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5. bastawhiz ◴[25 Jun 25 14:23 UTC] No.44377673{3}[source]▶
Unless you're uploading memes you've downloaded from elsewhere, this strictly isn't true. I'd consider myself an Instagram power user and the only thing that I and all the people I interact with is photos and videos. None of those are webp, or would have been worthwhile to save as webp as an intermediate format.
6. bastawhiz ◴[25 Jun 25 14:30 UTC] No.44377772{3}[source]▶
I could save my photos as BMPs like early digital cameras did but that doesn't make it practical or reasonable. My camera takes pictures as RAW or HEIF files. Why would I save my photos to a primarily lossy codec that's optimized and designed for distribution rather than preserving fidelity?

We used to do this with JPEG, in fact. And that's why many pictures on Facebook from pre-2018 or so all have a distinctive grainy look. It's artifacts on top of artifacts. Storage on phones isn't tight anymore, we don't need to store photos in a format meant to minimize bytes at the expense of quality.

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7. jdiff ◴[26 Jun 25 00:55 UTC] No.44383238{4}[source]▶
There's more on Instagram than photos. Lotta meme pages, lot of people just uploading random screenshots and photos they downloaded that have been turned over a million times. Heck, all it takes is someone downloading their own photo from SocialMediaX to reupload on SocialMediaY, or just uploading a the WebP that they exported for their website.
8. sunaookami ◴[26 Jun 25 04:45 UTC] No.44384257{3}[source]▶
Tangentially related but Instagram is really the worst plattform for photos. I don't understand why they crop and downsize (!) pictures. Not even Twitter does this, it's unironically a better photo plattform.