u/andrin55

I released XL-View 0.2.0, an update to the HDR JPEG XL image viewer I posted here about a month ago.

The biggest change in this release is that XL-View now also runs on Windows, in addition to Linux.

XL-View is mainly intended for viewing HDR JPEG XL images, including large images and panoramas. It supports PQ and HLG HDR and can also tone-map HDR images for SDR displays.

JPEG XL is still the only supported image format for now, and gain maps are not yet supported.

I'd be particularly interested in feedback from people using different kinds of JPEG XL files, especially HDR images.

Repository:
https://github.com/andrinbr/xl-view

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on XL-View, an open-source HDR still-image viewer for Linux. It is designed to handle large JPEG XL images and is written in Rust.

GitHub:
https://github.com/andrinbr/xl-view

XL-View currently requires:

• Wayland
• A Vulkan-capable GPU
• A working HDR display setup (SDR tone mapping works too)

At the moment, it supports JPEG XL only. The number of formats suitable for delivering actual HDR images to end users is still fairly limited, but I may add AVIF support in the future.

Both PQ and HLG images are supported. Gain-map-based HDR images are not currently supported.

The project is still in beta, and HDR support on Linux is relatively new, so results may vary depending on your GPU, drivers, compositor, desktop environment, and distribution. I have primarily tested it on Fedora 44 with an AMD GPU under KDE Plasma and GNOME.

One important limitation is memory usage during decoding. Very large images can require a substantial amount of RAM. For example, decoding a 200-megapixel image may use up to 6 GiB.

I’d appreciate feedback, bug reports, and testing on different hardware and desktop environments.