hi iNat community 
Any idea if/when it will be possible to upload JPEG XL photos in iNaturalist? It’s a bigger improvement to the “old” jpg format, allowing for smaller files with better quality, see for example: https://petapixel.com/2024/09/18/why-apple-uses-jpeg-xl-in-the-iphone-16-and-what-it-means-for-your-photos/
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there’s some previous discussion here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/increase-max-image-size-from-2048-x-2048-pixels/13627/26
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Almost no browsers support JPEG XL. WEBP is a better option but the downsides of that are discussed in the link above (though support is pretty universal now.)
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In theory, iNat could support JPEG XL uploading, as iNat doesn’t keep or serve your original images anyway. There are open source libraries for converting JPEG XL to JPEG (which is what iNat would store and serve). It’s probably just a question of demand. If JPEG XL becomes a widespread format, it would make sense for iNat to support it for uploads.
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Photographic quality wise jpex xl seems the best. Sure most browsers don’t support it… yet? The reason I was asking is that a pretty big player like Apple is now using it, and I wonder if the others will follow… or come back because Chrome & friends did support it (as your link shows).
Anyway, let’s wait & see what happens