Photo Archiving With JPEG-XL

After I wrote my last post comparing the quality and size of different image formats to replace Sony ARW files, a friend asked “why didn’t you compare JPEG-XL?” The reason I didn’t include it was because I didn’t think I had a good way of batch converting raw photos to JXL. This made it too esoteric and not a practical option for my archival purposes. However, I then realised that I could have just used Darktable to convert ARW to JXL. I exported my test images to JXL, then opened them up in Pixelmator Pro to compare against the original ARW files. The shadow reconstruction is most similar to the DNG file. You don’t get all the detail in the darkest area, but the slightly lighter areas retain more detail and have no colour banding, allowing them to be recovered more easily. Like the DNG they adjust to a natural shade. JPEG-XL image with exposure boosted to see how much detail we’ve kept in the shadows. For comparison, here’s the exposure-boosted ARW file. ARW with the exposure turned…

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