New image file format to replace JPEG

A new image file format, called Better Portable Graphics (BPG), has been invented to compress an image to a much smaller version than the standard, go-to file format for a similar quality

This is a bit on the techie side, but the end result is that with the new format, a great image will take up less space on a computer chip, reports Discovery.com.

It was developed by French programmer Fabrice Bellard, who writes on his website that he developed it to replace the JPEG image format when quality or file size was an issue.

Gizmag has a nice gallery showing the two versions of image files side-by-side. In each case, the BPG demonstrates fewer artifacts such as color banding and blocking than the same size JPEG. See above for at least one example.

The biggest problem for Bellard may be that Google has a new image format, too. Their WebP format compresses better than the JPEG and also handles moving images better than the GIF format.