INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC

STANDARD 18181-4

First edition
2022-08

Information technology — JPEG XL

image coding system —
Part 4:
Reference software
Technologies de l'information — Systѐme de codage d'images JPEG
XL —
Partie 4: Logiciel de référence

Reference number
ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

© ISO/IEC 2022
ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

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© ISO/IEC 2022
All rights reserved. Unless otherwise specified, or required in the context of its implementation, no part of this publication may
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 ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

Contents Page

Foreword......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... iv
1 Scope.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1
2 Normative references...................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
3 Terms and definitions..................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
4 Reference software............................................................................................................................................................................................ 1
4.1 General............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 1
4.2 Examples of use...................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
4.3 Access.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 2
4.4 Dependencies............................................................................................................................................................................................ 3
5 Usage instructions.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 3

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ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical
Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are
members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical
committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical
activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international
organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the
work.
The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance
are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria
needed for the different types of document should be noted. This document was drafted in
accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives or
www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs).
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject
of patent rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent
rights. Details of any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the
Introduction and/or on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www.iso.org/patents) or the IEC
list of patent declarations received (see https://patents.iec.ch).
Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not
constitute an endorsement.
For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and
expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to
the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) see
www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html. In the IEC, see www.iec.ch/understanding-standards.
This document was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology,
Subcommittee SC 29, Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information.
A list of all parts in the ISO/IEC 18181 series can be found on the ISO and IEC websites.
Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards
body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html and
www.iec.ch/national-committees.

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INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

Information technology — JPEG XL image coding system —

Part 4:
Reference software

1 Scope
This document provides reference implementations of ISO/IEC 18181-1 and ISO/IEC 18181-2. The
software supports lossless and lossy compression of images and image sequences for a wide range
of use cases such as (but not limited to) images with wide colour gamut and/or high dynamic range
and responsive web images. This document includes source code and instructions for compilation and
usage.

2 Normative references
The following documents are referred to in the text in such a way that some or all of their content
constitutes requirements of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For
undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
ISO/IEC 18181-1, Information technology — JPEG XL image coding system — Part 1: Core coding system
ISO/IEC 18181-2, Information technology — JPEG XL image coding system — Part 2: File format

3 Terms and definitions

For the purposes of this document, the terms and definitions given in ISO/IEC 18181-1 and
ISO/IEC 18181-2 apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminology databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:
— ISO Online browsing platform: available at https://​w ww​.iso​.org/​obp
— IEC Electropedia: available at https://​w ww​.electropedia​.org/​

4 Reference software

4.1 General
The purpose of this document is to provide the following:
— Reference decoder software capable of decoding codestreams that conform to ISO/IEC 18181-1 and
files that conform to ISO/IEC 18181-2.
— Reference encoder software capable of producing codestreams that conform to ISO/IEC 18181-1
and files that conform to ISO/IEC 18181-2.
The use of the reference software is not required for making an implementation of an encoder or decoder
in conformance to ISO/IEC 18181-1 or ISO/IEC 18181-2. Requirements established in ISO/IEC 18181-1
and ISO/IEC 18181-2 take precedence over the behaviour of the reference software.

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ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

4.2 Examples of use

The reference decoder software can be used for (non-exhaustive list):
— as an illustration of how to perform the decoding processes specified in ISO/IEC 18181-1 and
ISO/IEC 18181-2;
— as the starting basis for the implementation of a decoder that conforms to ISO/IEC 18181-1 and
ISO/IEC 18181-2;
— as a decoder implementation, integrated in an image display or image editing application that
supports ISO/IEC 18181-2 as an input file format;
— for (non-exhaustive) testing of the conformance of a codestream (or file) to the constraints specified
in ISO/IEC 18181-1 and ISO/IEC 18181-2.
NOTE 1 The lack of detection of any conformance violation by any reference software implementation cannot
be considered as a definitive proof that the codestream under test conforms to ISO/IEC 18181-1 or that the file
under test conforms to ISO/IEC 18181-2.

The reference encoder software can be used for (non-exhaustive list):

— as an illustration of how to implement an encoding process that produces codestreams that conform
to ISO/IEC 18181-1 and files that conform to ISO/IEC 18181-2;
— as a starting point for an implementation of an encoder that conforms to ISO/IEC 18181-1 and
ISO/IEC 18181-2;
— as an encoder implementation, integrated in an image authoring application that supports
ISO/IEC 18181-2 as an export file format;
— a means of generating codestreams conforming to ISO/IEC 18181-1 for testing purposes;
— a means of generating files conforming to ISO/IEC 18181-2 for testing purposes;
— a means of demonstrating and evaluating examples of the quality that can be achieved by an
encoding process that conforms to ISO/IEC 18181-1.
NOTE 2 No guarantee of the quality that will be achieved by an encoder is provided by its conformance to
ISO/IEC 18181-1, as the conformance of an encoder is only defined in terms of specific constraints imposed on the
syntax of the generated codestream. In particular, while sample encoder software implementations could suffice
to provide some illustrative examples of which quality can be achieved within ISO/IEC 18181-1, they provide
neither an assurance of minimum guaranteed image encoding quality nor maximum achievable image encoding
quality.

NOTE 3 The computation resource characteristics in terms of program or data memory usage, execution
speed, etc. of sample software encoder or decoder implementations cannot be construed as representative of the
typical, minimal or maximal computational resource characteristics to be exhibited by implementations of some
parts of ISO/IEC 18181-1.

4.3 Access
The reference software implementation for the ISO/IEC 18181 is provided as an electronic attachment
to this document, available from https://​standards​.iso​.org/​iso​-iec/​18181/​-4/​ed​-1/​en
NOTE 1 Building and usage instructions are provided in the file called README.md which is contained in the
Zip file.

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 ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

4.4 Dependencies
Excluding optional dependencies for input/output formats (detailed in Clause 5), the reference software
can be built for different operating systems and makes use of the following dependencies:
— highway (included in the Zip file)
— brotli (included in the Zip file)
— lcms2 or skcms (encoder only, to handle arbitrary ICC profiles in the input; skcms is included in the
Zip file)
— IQA-optimization, vmaf, difftest_ng (optional, for computing metrics for evaluation with the
benchmark_xl tool)

5 Usage instructions
This clause is informative.
Build instructions are provided in the file called README.md included in the Zip file.
To encode a source image to JPEG XL with default settings:
cjxl input.png output.jxl

For more settings:

cjxl --help

For a full list of options:

cjxl -v -v --help.

To decode a JPEG XL file:

djxl input.jxl output.png

The following input/output image formats are supported; all the dependencies listed here can be
optionally disabled:
— .ppm
— .pgm
— .pfm
— .pgx
— .png: requires lodepng or libpng
— .exr: requires libopenexr
— .gif: requires giflib
— .jpeg/.jpg: requires libjpeg or sjpeg, except for lossless JPEG bitstream recompression and
reconstruction as per ISO/IEC 18181-2
Additional options are documented in the README.md file.

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ISO/IEC 18181-4:2022(E)

ICS 35.040.30
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