The JFIF implementation of the JPEG standard, known to many as simply "jpeg", is well over 10 years old, and the cracks are really showing.
Compare these two images:
You might realize that the image on top is an uncompressed or lightly compressed version of
the image below.
The images are clipped rectangles from larger files, and the lower image is a 17KB JPEG/JFIF file.
Well, you're wrong, as usual. Incorrect, too. Unacceptable, at best.
The image on top is compressed using the new JPEG-2000 standard, and the image below
is the original rancid JPEG standard.
More importantly, though, the JPEG-2000 image is the same size as the JPEG image displayed below, weighing in at just 17KB for the entire image, of which only a clipping is displayed here.
The JPEG-2000 format offers many advantages; it is intended as a royalty-free algorithm, whereas the original JPEG standard is currently being cast into legal doubt, in a similar manner to the GIF format, which has now been eradicated in favour of PNG
To achieve a similar quality as JPEG-2000, the original JPEG algorithm will create a file almost 3 times the size of the JPEG-2000 version, and still suffers from "blocking" artifacts. JPEG-2000 eliminates blocking artifacts totally, by removing the grid division process.
You can see the entire original JPEG image here, and the JPEG-2000 version here.
Copyright (c) Cyan Helkaraxe 2002
Images Copyright (c) Sonic Team,SEGA 1999,2000,2001