JPEG XL also supports re-encoding existing JPEG files to decrease file size while keeping the original file quality. That really seems like useful feature but so far I haven’t seen any tooling (in macOS) to re-encode my existing photo library.
> but so far I haven’t seen any tooling (in macOS) to re-encode my existing photo library
On Linux you can re-encode every single .jpg to .jxl and they'll decode bit-for-bit, to the original .jpg.
On Debian and derivatives it's the libjxl-tools: the cjxl executable converts to .jxl and the djxl decompresses.
Works flawlessly.
P.S: as a sidenote there's zero reason anymore to serve a .jpg file to a browser when the browser supports .jxl files. That's just a waste of bandwith. (and if your stack cannot serve different files depending on the users' browsers' capacities, it's not much of a stack)
It would be safe to assume that Apple will eventually add a way to recompress your photo library to JXL… if they weren’t in the business of selling storage and cloud storage. They have in the past released tools to optimize storage so it wouldn’t be completely out of the ordinary, but… I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Sigh. I’ll happily hold my breath. Apple has done plenty to reduce use of storage. They even give you free iCloud storage to back your phone up when transferring to a new device. A very clear attractive source of penny pinching that they’ve put effort into to leaving on the table. This is tiring.
