Inside JPEG XL’s lossy encoder, all image data becomes floating-point numbers between 0.0 and 1.0. Not integers. Not 8-bit values from 0-255. Just fractions of full intensity.
No switching between 8-bit mode and 10-bit mode.
No worrying whether quantization tables are optimized for the right bit precision.
No cascading encoding decisions based on integer sample depth.
The codec doesn’t care about your display’s technical specs. It just needs to know: "what brightness level does white represent?" Everything scales from there.
JPEG XL not worrying about bit depth isn’t an oversight *or* simplification. It’s liberation from decades of accumulated cruft where we confused digital precision with perceptual quality.
By ignoring bit depth, JPEG XL’s float-based encoding embraces a profound truth: pixels aren’t just numbers; they’re perceptions.
Why This Matters
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