JPEG chroma subsampling blurs text in screenshots; 4:4:4 keeps edges sharper

A developer tested how JPEG chroma subsampling affects screenshots containing text, finding that the common 4:2:0 setting softens thin white text on coloured buttons. Libraries such as sharp and Pillow default to or can fall back to 4:2:0, and even Pillow at quality 95 still wrote 4:2:0 output. Comparing a Retina screenshot at 1x and 2x, the author found that 4:4:4 at quality 80 rendered the text closer to the source than 4:2:0 at quality 90, despite a smaller file. The 4:4:4 option increased file sizes by roughly 12 to 17 percent for the whole frame. The author warns that whole-frame PSNR scores can mislead, since most of a screenshot is flat background.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.

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