Guetzli

Like it or not, JPEG compression algorithms are used on a vast scale, especially by webmasters who wish to reduce the size of hosted media files and speed up page load times. As a result, many images are plagued by JPEG artifacts, but there may be a better solution available, in the form a JPEG encoder developed by Google.

Guetzli is a new, open-source algorithm designed to create high-quality JPEG images that are up to 35% smaller than those generated by other popular algorithms. It also produces fewer artifacts, but it is considerably slower and more resource-intensive.

Guetzli primarily improves upon the quantization stage of the JPEG compression process, which is the main culprit behind the loss of detail in encoded images. The results are certainly up to par, as there are noticeably fewer artifacts to be seen in JPEG files created with this algorithm.

Of course, better quality isn’t everything this encoder offers. The output images look better, and they are also considerably smaller. While results may vary depending on the source material, our tests produced pictures that were 24-30% smaller than those created with libjpeg.

The downside is that, while powerful, Guetzli takes a lot longer to process images. As you can imagine, a significant number of calculations are required to generate a small, high-quality output file, but we are hoping that things will be improved in future releases.

The utility is mostly aimed at webmasters who wish to optimize pages and reduce loading times, but anyone can take advantage of this encoder, provided you are comfortable with waiting a bit longer for your images to be processed.

There is no need to build the software yourself, as the compiled binaries are readily available. The utility is simple enough to use, as long as you are comfortable with using the command console.

Guetzli can encode both PNG and JPG files, and you can set the quality of the output image in units equivalent to the libjpeg quality setting, as well as have the software display a trace of all encoding attempts.

In the end, there is no question that images created with Guetzli are of superior quality, in addition to being quite a bit smaller, but it is up to each user to decide if the longer compression times are worth it. Nevertheless, this is a very promising algorithm, and it can be invaluable for webmasters who wish to reduce loading times without sacrificing image quality.