avif

AVIF, short for AV1 Image File Format, is a still image file format designed to be an efficient successor to older formats such as JPEG and PNG. It uses the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) container and is based on the AV1 video coding standard. As part of a royalty-free ecosystem developed by the Alliance for Open Media, AVIF aims to provide high image quality at smaller file sizes.

AVIF supports both lossy and lossless compression, 8- to 12-bit color depth, and wide color gamut with chroma subsampling options. It can encode HDR imagery using transfer functions such as PQ or HLG and can preserve an alpha channel for transparency. It can store metadata and color information, and it supports still images as well as animated sequences within a single file.

Encoding and decoding rely on AV1 intra-frame coding inside the HEIF container. In practice, AVIF typically yields smaller files than JPEG and often competitive with or better than WebP for photographic content, at comparable quality. Decoding is generally efficient on modern devices, though encoding speed and tooling can vary by implementation.

Support and adoption: AVIF is supported in major web browsers and image libraries, and is increasingly used for web images and media pipelines. It competes with JPEG and WebP, and coexists with other modern formats such as JPEG XL, each with different trade-offs in tooling and compatibility.