Joint Photographic Experts Group


The Joint Photographic Experts Group is the joint committee between ISO/IEC JTC 1 and ITU-T Study Group 16 that created and maintains the JPEG, JPEG 2000, and JPEG XR standards. It is one of two sub-groups of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29, Working Group 1 – titled as Coding of still pictures. In the ITU-T, its work falls in the domain of the ITU-T Visual Coding Experts Group. ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 Working Group 1 is responsible for the JPEG and JBIG standards. The scope of the organization includes the work of both the Joint Photographic Experts Group and Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group.
In April 1983, ISO started to work to add photo quality graphics to text terminals. In the mid-1980s, both CCITT and ISO had standardization groups for image coding: CCITT Study Group VIII – Telematic Services and ISO TC97 SC2 WG8 – Coding of Audio and Picture Information. They were historically targeted on image communication. In 1986, it was decided to create the Joint Photographic Expert Group. The JPEG committee was created in 1986. In 1988, it was decided to create the Joint Bi-level Image Group. The group typically meets three times annually in North America, Asia and Europe. The group often meets jointly with the JBIG committee. The current JPEG president is Touradj Ebrahimi, who was previously chairman of the JPEG 2000 development group and led the MPEG-4 standards committee.

Joint Bi-level Image experts Group

The Joint Bi-level Image experts Group is the second sub-group of the same working group as the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which focuses on binary images. They created the JBIG and JBIG2 standard.

Standards published and under development

The JPEG as a sub-group of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1 – Coding of Still Pictures have developed various standards, which have been published by ITU-T and/or ISO/IEC. The standards developed by the JPEG and JBIG sub-groups are referred to as a joint development of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 1 and ITU-T SG 16. The JPEG standards consist of different Parts. Each part covers a certain aspect of the whole specification. Some of the published JPEG standards were revised by later amendments and/or new editions. Standards developed and under development by JPEG are shown in the table below.
Common NamePartFirst public release date ISO/IEC NumberITU NumberFormal Title
JPEGPart 11992ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images – Requirements and guidelines
JPEGPart 21994ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images – Compliance testing
JPEGPart 31996ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images: Extensions
JPEGPart 41998ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images: Registration of JPEG profiles, SPIFF profiles, SPIFF tags, SPIFF colour spaces, APPn markers, SPIFF compression types and Registration Authorities
JPEGPart 52013ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images: JPEG File Interchange Format
JPEGPart 62013ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images: Application to printing systems
JPEGPart 72019ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images: Reference software
JPEG-LSPart 11998ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Lossless and near-lossless compression of continuous-tone still images: Baseline
JPEG-LSPart 22002ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Lossless and near-lossless compression of continuous-tone still images: Extensions
JPEG 2000Part 12000ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system – Core coding system
JPEG 2000Part 22004ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Extensions
JPEG 2000Part 32002ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Motion JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000Part 42002ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Conformance testing
JPEG 2000Part 52003ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Reference software
JPEG 2000Part 62003ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Compound image file format
JPEG 2000Part 82007ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Secure JPEG 2000
JPEG 2000Part 92005ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Interactivity tools, APIs and protocols
JPEG 2000Part 102008ITU-T Rec. Information technology –JPEG 2000 image coding system: Extensions for three-dimensional data
JPEG 2000Part 112007ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: Wireless
JPEG 2000Part 122004Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system – Part 12: ISO base media file format
JPEG 2000Part 132008ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: An entry level JPEG 2000 encoder
JPEG 2000Part 142013ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG 2000 image coding system: XML structural representation and reference
MRC1999ITU-T Rec. Information technology – Mixed Raster Content
JPSearchPart 12007Information technology – JPSearch – Part 1: System framework and components
JPSearchPart 22011Information technology – JPSearch – Part 2: Registration, identification and management of schema and ontology
JPSearchPart 32010Information technology – JPSearch – Part 3: Query format
JPSearchPart 42010Information technology – JPSearch – Part 4: File format for metadata embedded in image data
JPSearchPart 52011Information technology – JPSearch – Part 5: Data interchange format between image repositories
JPSearchPart 62012Information technology – JPSearch – Part 6: Reference software
JPEG XRPart 12011Information technology – JPEG XR image coding system – Part 1: System architecture
JPEG XRPart 22009ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG XR image coding system – Part 2: Image coding specification
JPEG XRPart 32010ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG XR image coding system – Part 3: Motion JPEG XR
JPEG XRPart 42010ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG XR image coding system – Part 4: Conformance testing
JPEG XRPart 52010ITU-T Rec. Information technology – JPEG XR image coding system – Part 5: Reference software
AICPart 12017Information technology – Advanced image coding and evaluation methodologies – Part 1: Guidelines for codec evaluation
AICPart 22015Information technology – Advanced image coding and evaluation – Part 2: Evaluation procedure for nearly lossless coding
JPEG XTPart 12015Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 1: Core Coding System Specification
JPEG XTPart 22016Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 2: Coding of High Dynamic Range Images
JPEG XTPart 32015Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 3: Box file format
JPEG XTPart 42017Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 4: Conformance Testing
JPEG XTPart 52018Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 5: Reference software
JPEG XTPart 62016Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 6: IDR Integer coding
JPEG XTPart 72017Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 7: HDR Floating-Point Coding
JPEG XTPart 82016Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 8: Lossless and Near-lossless Coding
JPEG XTPart 92016Information technology – Scalable Compression and Coding of Continuous-Tone Still Images – Part 9: Alpha channel coding

JPEG XL

In 2017, JTC1/SC29/WG1 issued a Call for proposals for JPEG XL the next generation image coding standard. The standard is expected to follow still image compression performance shown by HEVC HM, Daala and WebP. The core requirements include better compression efficiency, 8–10 bits per component, RGB/YCbCr/ICtCp color encoding, animated images, alpha channel coding, Rec.709 color space and gamma, Rec.2100 wide color gamut and high dynamic range, and high-quality compression of synthetic images, such as bitmap fonts and gradients. Additional requirements include higher bit depths, different color spaces, embedded preview images, lossless alpha channel encoding, image region coding, and low-complexity encoding. The current contributors have agreed to licensing it on a royalty-free basis. The current target publication date is October 2019. The reference software implementation of JPEG XL will losslessly transcode JPEG images while reducing their size by 20%, and will also include lightweight lossless conversion to JPEG for backward compatibility.
Common NamePartFirst public release date ISO/IEC NumberITU NumberFormal Title
JPEG XLunder developmentJPEG XL Image Coding System