Introduction

Guetzli is a JPEG encoder that aims for excellent compression density at high visual quality. Guetzli-generated images are typically 20-30% smaller than images of equivalent quality generated by libjpeg. Guetzli generates only sequential (nonprogressive) JPEGs due to faster decompression speeds they offer.

Using

Note: Guetzli uses a large amount of memory. You should provide 300MB of memory per 1MPix of the input image.

Note: Guetzli uses a significant amount of CPU time. You should count on using about 1 minute of CPU per 1 MPix of input image.

Note: Guetzli assumes that input is in sRGB profile with a gamma of 2.2. Guetzli will ignore any color-profile metadata in the image.

To try out Guetzli you need to build or download the Guetzli binary. The binary reads a PNG or JPEG image and creates an optimized JPEG image:

guetzli [--quality Q] [--verbose] input_filename_1.jpg input_filename_2.jpg
guetzli [--quality Q] [--verbose] *.jpg

Note that Guetzli is designed to work on high quality images. You should always prefer providing uncompressed input images (e.g. that haven't been already compressed with any JPEG encoders, including Guetzli). While it will work on other images too, results will be poorer. You can try compressing an enclosed sample high quality image.

You can pass a --quality Q parameter to set quality in units equivalent to libjpeg quality. You can also pass a --verbose flag to see a trace of encoding attempts made or a --keepmetadata to keep the metadata inside your image. The --suffix VALUE will add a suffix to the filename. By default, the suffix is 'compressed'. For example, for the file input.jpg, the output file will be named input.compressed.jpg. To overwrite the existing file, use the --overwrite parameter.

Please note that JPEG images do not support alpha channel (transparency). If the input is a PNG with an alpha channel, it will be overlaid on black background before encoding.