MIME Database / Compare Formats / canon-cr3 vs JXL

canon-cr3 vs JXL Format Comparison

canon-cr3

Canon RAW 3

image/x-canon-cr3

JPEG XL

image/jxl

JXL

A complete technical comparison of Canon RAW 3 and JPEG XL — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

JXL wins on browser support

Feature Support

Feature	canon-cr3	JXL
Transparency (Alpha)	✕ No	Yes
Animation Support	✕ No	Yes
Progressive Loading	✕ No	Yes
HDR Support	Yes	Yes
EXIF Metadata	Yes	Yes
ICC Color Profile	Yes	Yes

Canon RAW 3

image/x-canon-cr3

Extension

.cr3

Container ISOBMFF (ISO/IEC 14496-12)

Compression Lossless / Lossy (C-RAW)

Algorithm

Canon Proprietary LosslessCanon Proprietary Lossy (C-RAW)

Color Depth 14-bit (Per Channel)

Developed by Canon Inc.

Released 2018

Magic Bytes

00 00 00 18 66 74 79 70 63 72 78 20

Full canon-cr3 reference →

JPEG XL

image/jxl

Extension

.jxl

Container ISOBMFF / JPEG XL Codestream

Compression Lossy (VarDCT) / Lossless (Modular)

Algorithm

VarDCT (Variable block-size DCT)Modular (Predictive coding for lossless)

Color Depth 8-bit, 10-bit, 12-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit (Float)

Developed by Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)

Released 2021

Magic Bytes

FF 0A (Codestream) / 00 00 00 0C 4A 58 4C 20 0D 0A 87 0A (Container)

Full JXL reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser	canon-cr3	JXL
Chrome	✕	✕
Firefox	✕	✕
Safari	✕	✓ 17+
Edge	✕	✕
IE (Legacy)	✕	✕

canon-cr3

canon-cr3 Strengths

Maintains 14-bit uncompressed sensor data, offering massive flexibility for recovering shadows and highlights in post-production
The new C-RAW format offers roughly 40% smaller file sizes than uncompressed raw with virtually indistinguishable quality loss
Utilizes the modern and extensible ISOBMFF container, moving away from archaic TIFF limitations

Limitations

Being a proprietary format, it requires frequent software updates to third-party editing tools (like Lightroom or Capture One) every time a new camera model is released
Completely unsupported in web browsers and standard operating system image viewers without specialized raw codecs
Larger file sizes than in-camera JPEGs, requiring more storage space and processing power

JXL

JXL Strengths

Capable of losslessly recompressing legacy JPEG files, saving ~20% space while retaining perfect byte-for-byte restorability
Highly superior progressive decoding (Saliency-driven), allowing recognizable images to load extremely fast on slow connections
Outperforms WebP and competes favorably with AVIF, especially at high-fidelity settings and for complex textures/photography
Royalty-free with an open-source reference implementation (libjxl)

Limitations

Google's removal of JXL support from Chrome severely hindered its adoption as a universal web standard
Lack of hardware decoding chips compared to video-derived codecs like AVIF (AV1)
File parsing logic is complex due to the split between raw codestreams and ISOBMFF containers