[fao_]

> a lossless format [is] pretty much pointless for photos

Why is that? Every edit you make to that photo means that the photo will degrade in quality. I always thought JPEG artifacts and compression lossage was a bad thing for photos, not a good thing?

[masklinn]

> I always thought JPEG artifacts and compression lossage was a bad thing for photos, not a good thing?

Sure JPEG artefacts are bad, but that can be mitigated (stop compressing so much). Your photos being an order of magnitude larger is worse, and inherent to the way PNG works.

[Dylan16807]

Generation loss is not inherent to lossy compression. The blame lies mostly or entirely on encoders. Here's an example of doing it right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IheZzcYUV9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7vXJbLhTyI

[floatboth]

It's a very good thing when your internet connection is crap.

[thrillgore]

The compromise is that with lossy compression, you can significantly shear the filesize used for retrieval, which granted isn't an issue of speed (but still is for bandwidth consumption).