alt Hacker NewsA potentially major issue I have with AVIF is that because it is based on a video format, any hardware decoding support AVIF will get is likely to be restrained to common video scenarios. This can result in eg. only 4:2:0 YUV being supported by hardware decoders, as that's the upper limit of AV1 Main Profile (and thus the limit of AVIF Baseline Profile). And 4:2:0 is just a poor fit for certain categories of images (like various kinds of illustrations, screenshots, etc). I would not be very happy about a web where lossy 4:4:4 image compression would be heavily discouraged with modern formats.
Also, good lossless compression absolutely does matter for the web as well. Lossy images just cannot be used in all circumstances - like when comparing compression quality (especially of videos), for example!
EDIT: To give an additional example, pixel art is an entire field of art (which is very much still active today) where both lossless compression is a must and where 4:2:0 would be absolutely catastrophic for quality.
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There have been a number of experiments to use hardware decoders for images in browsers, all of which have fallen flat; not even Safari does it for AVIF or WebP. Thus, 4:4:4 AVIF is supported absolutely everywhere. Feel free to try it now. I can see how hwdec is compelling for JPEG XL in theory, given how slow decoding is.
In the modern age image decoders need to handle untrusted inputs, and the big players rarely use hardware image decoding, even when it's available, because it's so hard to rely on its memory safety.
Several 'zero click exploits' have involved image/document format decoder bugs, as messaging apps and file browsers will often generate preview images the moment an image arrives.
Wait, DAIZ!? I genuinely did not expect to see you here chiming in. Still appreciate much of your 10 bit anime advocacy from way back.
I don’t think hardware decoders are used for images. They are light enough you can do it in software.
AVIF's support for non-photographic images is covered in the article. It supports lossless.
I'm not super familiar with AV1/AVIF but I do have extensive experience using h264 for desktop streaming, and all major implementations support 444 in hardware and software, and I doubt more advanced codecs/image formats have a limitation like this. Asked ChatGPT and it also claimed there's no problem with 444 and AVIF/AV1.
Browsers already fully support 4:4:4 AVIF and are not going to regress on this, as it would be a huge compat issue.
It isn't clear whether AVIF hardware decoding will ever be an advantage, but for video formats, Firefox and Chrome already pick between hardware and software decoders to ensure the content plays correctly. Safari is much flakier here, but again, for images, they're not going to regress on 4:4:4 AVIF support.