What Is AVIF?
AVIF is a next-generation image format based on the AV1 video codec, offering the best compression efficiency available today while being royalty-free.
AVIF explained
AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) is a modern image format derived from the AV1 video codec, developed by the Alliance for Open Media. It offers significantly better compression than both JPG and WebP — typically 50% smaller than JPG and 20% smaller than WebP at equivalent visual quality. AVIF supports HDR, wide color gamut, 10- and 12-bit color depth, transparency, and both lossy and lossless compression. Being royalty-free and backed by major tech companies (Google, Apple, Mozilla, Netflix), AVIF is poised to become the dominant image format for the web, though encoding is slower than WebP and browser support, while growing fast, is not yet as complete.
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Related terms
WebP is a modern image format developed by Google that provides superior lossy and lossless compression for images on the web.
Lossy compression reduces file size by permanently discarding data deemed less perceptible, trading some quality for significantly smaller files.
Lossless compression reduces file size without discarding any data, allowing the original file to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed version.
A codec (coder-decoder) is an algorithm that compresses and decompresses audio or video data, determining the quality, file size, and compatibility of media files.