The JPEG standard made its debut in 1991 (publicly in 1992), and since then it’s become the most widely used lossy compression format for digital images. Now, The Independent JPEG Group at the Leipzig Institute for Applied Informatics — the folks responsible for defining the standard — has released an all new version 9.1 of the software library that comes with some powerful new abilities.

The new version of the ‘libjpeg’ library, as it’s called, is making headlines because, not only does it support 12-bit color depth and additional scaling functions, the new standard also supports more compression options including completely lossless compression.

So, while it might be some time still before any photographic hardware or software adopts the standard, this ability could potentially make it a competitor for both RAW and TIFF files when it comes to working with and archiving photographs.

You can get more details about the update from the original press release, but before you do that, what do you think of this update? Is it a big deal, or does it not matter given the prevalence of RAW files in the world of digital photography?

(via SLR Lounge)

Image credits: Photographer by Nicolás García