Open hubertmeier opened 2 months ago
HEIC is patented technology. There are more suitable alternatives for open source projects: JPEG XL and AVIF (which can be implemented via libheif as well, or just libavif).
But as far as I know HEIF is not affected by patents but HEIC is (due to HEVC encoding). Maybe I don't unterstand: I never did anything else than still images in Rawtherapee - isn't HEIF enough? Why do you think HEIC is needed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Image_File_Format#Patent_licensing
I see, it's more complicated than I can understand at the moment.
GIMP uses libheif. HEIF: "GIMP supports this container by supporting AVIF and HEIC image formats." https://developer.gimp.org/core/standards/
HEIF is a container and itself is not affected by patents. But codec inside can be, for example AVCI (AVC/h264 in HEIF) or HEIC (HEVC/h265 in HEIF). However AVIF (AV1 in HEIF) is excellent, patent-free codec. libheif supports many codecs, including all mentioned earlier. So using libheif gives support for many formats/codecs at once.
the only option to save pictures with more than 8bit is TIF, but this is not an option because of the file size, JPG has only 8bit. HEIF could archive same file sizes like JPG but with more bits per pixel.
thank you