AVIF vs JPEG XL: Resolution and Multi-Page Support

AVIF and JPEG XL are two leading next-generation image formats designed to replace legacy standards like JPEG and PNG. While both offer impressive compression efficiency and modern color features, they differ significantly in their architectural design. This comparison examines how AVIF and JPEG XL handle maximum image resolutions and multi-page document capabilities, highlighting why one format is better suited for extreme dimensions and archival scanning than the other.

Maximum Resolution

AVIF is derived from the AV1 video codec, which intrinsically ties its baseline capabilities to video resolution limits. A single AVIF frame or tile is natively capped at 8192 × 4320 pixels (8K resolution). To overcome this, AVIF employs a grid-tiling mechanism where multiple smaller frames are assembled to create a single large image, reaching a theoretical limit of 65,536 × 65,536 pixels. While functional, rendering large tiled AVIF files can increase decoding complexity and cause memory overhead on resource-constrained devices.

JPEG XL was designed specifically for still photography, digital art, and large-scale imagery without relying on video standards. It natively supports dimensions up to 1,073,741,823 × 1,073,741,824 pixels (over 1 billion pixels on each side) without requiring tiling workarounds. This virtually limitless dimension capacity makes JPEG XL far superior for massive print files, panoramic stitching, satellite imaging, and ultra-high-resolution medical imagery.

Multi-Page Document Support

AVIF relies on the ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF), derived from the HEIF container. This architecture allows an AVIF file to store multiple still images, auxiliary images (such as depth maps or alpha channels), and image sequences. While this technically enables multi-page document storage, software implementation for this specific use case is rare. In practice, multi-item AVIF files are almost exclusively used for animations or photo bursts, leaving standard document readers without consistent support for navigating multi-page AVIF files.

JPEG XL provides native, robust support for multi-frame and layered configurations specifically built to replace multi-page formats like TIFF and PDF in image-heavy workflows. A single JPEG XL file can contain distinct pages, complete with individual metadata, differing frame rates, preview thumbnails, and blending modes. Decoders can selectively extract or stream individual pages without decompressing the entire file, making JPEG XL highly optimized for document management systems, book digitizations, and multi-page office scanning.

Conclusion

When choosing between the two formats for large-format imaging and document storage, JPEG XL is the clear winner. While AVIF performs well for standard web assets and animated graphics, its video-based origin limits its native resolution and complicates document workflows. JPEG XL’s native gigapixel-plus scalability and purpose-built frame-layering architecture make it the superior choice for high-resolution graphics and multi-page document archiving.