When it comes to distributing images on the web, JPG is the most popular format among users. But as we raise our standards, JPG becomes inadequate, and we have to turn to something like PNG, which produces lossless images but with a size that's too large to be efficient. That's where FLIF comes in: a new lossless and open source format that aims to combine the best of JPG and PNG.
Try to visualize for a moment all the images being uploaded and downloaded on the web right now. Servers around the world try to serve photos as quickly as possible to computers, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, in-vehicle systems, advertising platforms, and much more. A single image may not amount to much, but when you combine the processing of millions and millions of images, the bytes add up quickly. Granted, anyone can reduce the quality of an image to make it smaller, but nobody wants to see a pixelated horror. The JPG and PNG formats have tried to strike a balance depending on our needs, and we must admit that balance works quite well. So, is there room for another format?
FLIF: Free Lossless Image Format
The format is called FLIF, which stands for Free Lossless Image Format. Its official presentation took place last October, and according to its developers, it's capable of outperforming other formats such as PNG, WebP, and BPG. The first point in FLIF's favor is its flexibility. Technically, it's lossless technology, but in cases with serious bandwidth limitations, FLIF can generate a preview of the content through a partial download. Although progressive decoding of an image is nothing new, FLIF proves to be better at this task than the competition. And then there's compression: using conventional PNG images as a baseline, FLIF manages to produce copies that take up 43 percent less space than the originals, without any loss of quality.
Adoption and Future
The numbers are definitely in FLIF's favor, but it also needs a good level of adoption. With more than three months with us, there doesn't seem to be any plan among the major developers to add support, something relatively simple considering that the format is free and open source (GPL v3). On the other hand, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that its code is in alpha phase and will need several more revisions. In a few years, we might see FLIF replacing PNG... but the same has been said about JPG, and there it is, still doing its thing...
