JPEG XL [jxls] Files for Garuda Wallpaper?

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1

Garuda has some exceptional wallpapers created for it, here is an example:

The only problem with the above png is its file size - 2.5MB.

Converseen is an excellent piece of software that is designed to reduce the file size of images, and it allows png fles to be converted to heic files.

The image below shows how easy it is to convert png to heic files - simply select image and convert to heic.

png-heic
png-heic1375×775 38.5 KB

The file size of the end result is 54KB.

heic
heic1632×873 39.1 KB

Note that this webp image looks washed out compared to the original heic image, but neither this website nor the browser supports heic. Fortunately Garuda does, so if you use Converseen to convert the above png to heic and then use 'open with' > image viewer you can see the image in all of its glory.

Can Garuda use heic wallpapers rather than png ones? If so it could have a lot more wallpapers that use a lot less space.

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2

your post reads like an ad, btw

https://pngquant.org/ can do 99% of that and is what i use to compress most of the png's i find. sudo pacman -Sy pngquant

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I can assure you my post is no ad. I am selling nothing, I'm just looking to improve Garuda.

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I thank you for the nice remark as this is one of mine.
but why would you want to reduce it,s quality as a wallpaper?

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5

Thanks for the great work.

I am not looking to reduce its quality as a wallpaper - the quality of heic files is exceptional for its file size, please take a look for yourself.

Garuda currently comes bundled with 40 wallpapers, but heic files would allow a lot more to be bundled with the distro without increasing the iso size.

Hopefully this would allow some of your wallpapers to be bundled with the distro.

[Edit] here are some heic examples: HEIF Example Images - High Efficiency Image File Format

6

Alternatively avif can be used instead of heic. It doesn't have license limitations.

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7

I took a look at your example :smiley:
Your are right we could reduce the bit rate by many different programs !
But it Will reduce quality.
So it depends on the medium that you wish to display it on

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8

Converseen supports avif conversion, so I gave it a try on the wallpaper at the top of the post. It reduced the file size to 23KB!

avif
avif1632×873 54.2 KB

You are correct, but it is barely noticeable - i.e. there aren’t any noticeable artifacts.

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I was so staggered at tthe tiny file size of the above wallpaper that I decided to convert a different one to see if there is an error with the size shown.

Below is a different wallpaper, and its file size is 12KB!

avif2
avif21632×873 37.8 KB

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Maybe you can live with it, I can’t. :slight_smile:

If you want more Garuda wallpapers, you can reload them.

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11

The net result is little different from lossy JPGs. See JPEG compression formats in HEIF files

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12

I’m with SGS on this. it’s literal night and day.

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13

I agree with SGS and Locutus, the quality of the images is much worse. If you are sending a small picture in an MMS message: fine. But for the wallpaper on your desktop I think it is worth a few extra megs for it to look nice.

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14

I think it makes sense for devices like phones with smaller displays to use lossy formats like HEIC and AVIF since the compression artefacts are less visible, but as someone who uses a 4K 15" screen (which is already small for using 4K), that amount of compression is too much. I definitely can't live with it, like SGS :') I too would much rather consent to additional downloads than get lower quality images.
Looking at a wallpaper with compression artefacts that obvious would drive me nuts, and already so many wallpapers drive me insane not being clear enough - even my current one, which I only tolerate because I love the colours and the visible pixelation is in a small area. :sweat_smile:
If I can see pixelation in basically everything, it's no good!

Making everyone use HEIC wallpapers isn't a good strategy, because different screen sizes and resolutions need to be taken into account as well. My crusty 10 year old laptop with a 15" display that's low res and is super desaturated? Maybe I'd be happy with it there since the artefacts won't be as prominent, but I reckon someone using a massive TV screen as their monitor would be peeved at the very least, and question the quality of the distro at worst.

If there were a fresh lossless format that is somehow smaller than PNG and preserves the quality however, that'd be a different story. :smiley:

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15

Thanks for the replies.

Your points about quality are totally justified - no one wants to look at excellent desktop wallpapers that look awful because of visual artifacts.

With this in mind I continued to look around - I wanted to know if there is any form of open source image compression software that offers close to lossless visual quality. I finally came across what I was looking for last night.

It requires libjxl installed to work, so I downloaded and installed it from the AUR. I then converted a couple of png wallpapers to jxl files with an online converter. I noticed that the conversion process was a lot quicker than that for HEIC and AVIF files.

I then fired up Gnome's image viewer, double clicked on the jxl file, and prayed that the image would be displayed. It did work, and the image quality of the jxl file was excellent :smiley:

I then right clicked on the image viewer and selected 'set as wallpaper', but this didn't happen - my desktop just went blank :unamused:

Anyway, it was really late by this time, so I just turned off my laptop.

When I got up today I booted up the laptop, and I started digging around to try and find out why jxl files wouldn't display as the desktop wallpaper, but I found nothing. I decided to fire up the image viewer and select 'set as wallpaper' one last time, but I didn't have much hope.

Much to my surprise it worked - all that was required to get things working was a reboot :blush:

I found that Converseen would convert pngs to jxls so I gave it a try on a reasonably complex image...

converseen
converseen1375×775 43.6 KB

The file size of the image was reduced from 2.1MB to 129KB.

HALLOWEEN-129KB
HALLOWEEN-129KB1632×873 63.5 KB

To show the quality of the lossy jxl I converted it to a lossless png file...

Halloween_tux_Remix
Halloween_tux_Remix1920×1080 85.1 KB

...unfortunately the website has converted this image to a jpg, but it gives a good idea of the quality. I personally can't see any difference in quality between the original png file and the jxl file on my laptop's oled display, the only difference I see is file size. If lossless compression is essential for walllpaper images jpeg xl also does that, and the file size of its lossless images are apparently 35% smaller than pngs.

Garuda currently has 40 wallpapers bundled with it, and my guess is this accounts for ~80MB on the iso. If these files are replaced with lossy jxl files, and nine lossy files take up 1MB, then the distro's iso size will not increase if it is bundled with 600+ extra wallpapers

awesome-03-wp-sgs
awesome-03-wp-sgs1920×1080 24.6 KB

:grin:

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Why mass instead of class? :wink:

Actually there is no need for wallpapers, I see them rather rarely because I use i3wm 90% of the time. :smiley:

But they make a good eye-catcher to distinguish from other distributions.

If you need and like a lot of changing wallpapers, you will download them somewhere after installation anyway. :slight_smile:

However, anything that reduces the overall ISO size is a good idea.

Maybe we should add wallpaper selection to the setup wizard?
Whereas I just notice that I would have to add an icon there. :grin:

grafik
grafik468×558 28.2 KB

About the conversion to jpg in the forum, linking to gitlab/github solves that problem.

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18

More like a mass of class :smiling_face:

The reason why I’m suggesting having more wallpapers with the distro is a simple one - when I go through the ‘show your artwork’ page I see a gold mine of creative genius. Some distros have an occasional great piece of artwork, Garuda has got hundreds of pieces. :astonished:

It strikes me as a crying shame that the wallpapers aren’t getting the attention they deserve, this is why I’m suggesting using JPEG XL to compress the png images and bundle them with the distro.

I currently have some time to kill so I’d be happy to go through the images, compress a load of them into JPEG XL files, and forward them to you. You can then decide which ones should be bundled with the distro, and even if a lot are chosen there’s little chance of them increasing the iso size - 100 wallpapers should only require ~10MB :grin:

Good idea.

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19

That sounds good to me.
Especially since you show initiative and don’t expect others to do the “work” :slight_smile: .
But you could also bundle it additionally, like here.

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20

It is in chaotic-aur :slight_smile:

sudo pacman -Syu libjxl-git
:: Synchronizing package databases...
garuda is up to date
core is up to date
extra is up to date
community is up to date
multilib is up to date
chaotic-aur is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (3) gperftools-2.10-1  highway-1.0.2-1  libjxl-git-0.7.0.r130.g41670566-1

Total Download Size:    5,56 MiB
Total Installed Size:  18,98 MiB

Reboot?
Same error befor and after install libjxl

converseen
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
converseen: unable to load module '/usr/lib/ImageMagick-7.1.0/modules-Q16HDRI/coders/jxl.la': file not found @ error/module.c/OpenModule/1289
21

Anything that doesn’t take away of the usability that is.

@Colin “More like a mass of class”? I truly think not. I can still see the difference between the two images you posted.

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