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Small Wavelet Thumbnail & Preview Codec - WTPC

A simple, drop-in image codec in the style of stb_image (single header library). It targets low sizes from 200 B to 36 KB at resolutions around 256x256. The main target for thumbnails is 1400 B -- designed to fit within one MTU packet, so the user sees something while the main preview downloads.

It has two modes: fast Huffman and slower EBCOT-lite (much simpler than JPEG 2000 -- not even Tier-1, since that would need far more code). Despite its simplicity, WTPC outperforms JPEG 2000 and JPEG XL on this small-image benchmark, likely because its quantization is tuned to sharpen at low bitrates and the test dataset is relatively small (~3000 images).

API and usage

   === API ===

   typedef struct {
       int encoded_bytes;   - output number of bytes
       int result_q;        - resulting quantization factor if target_bytes provided, or same as 'quality' if target_bytes=0
       int search_steps;    - number of iterations to search target bytes quantization 
       int ebcot;           - 1 = ebcot or 0 = huffman mode for best pick if auto huffman_mode used
       int huffman_y_size;  - in bits if not picked static table
       int huffman_u_size;
       int huffman_v_size;
       int huffman_y_table; - 0..NUM_DEF_TABLES-1 - static, NUM_DEF_TABLES - custom written in bitstream
       int huffman_u_table;
       int huffman_v_table;
   } wtpc_enc_info;

   unsigned char *wtpc_encode_mem(const unsigned char *rgb, wtpc_enc_info *info,
       int w, int h, int target_bytes, int quality, int chroma_420,
       int huffman_mode, int huf_extra_ctx, int has_alpha, int stride);
     Encode an RGB/RGBA image in memory. Returns malloc'd WTPC bitstream,
     or NULL on error. Caller must free().
       rgb           : input pixels, h rows of stride bytes each.
                        Each row has w pixels, 3 bytes/pixel (RGB) or 4 (RGBA).
       info          : output struct, filled with encoding details (may be NULL).
       w, h          : image dimensions (>= 1).
       target_bytes  : desired output size in bytes. 0 = use 'quality' instead.
                       When > 0, the encoder does a binary search over the
                       quality range [1..MAX_QUALITY] to hit the target.
       quality       : quantization level 1..MAX_QUALITY (1024). Lower = better
                       quality / larger file. Used only when target_bytes == 0.
       chroma_420    : 0 = 4:4:4 (full chroma), 1 = 4:2:0 (half chroma).
                       4:2:0 saves ~15-30% bytes with minor visual loss.
       huffman_mode  : 0 = auto-pick smaller of ebcot/huffman,
                       1 = huffman, 2 = ebcot.
       huf_extra_ctx : 0 = single Huffman table (faster),
                       1 = two context-switched tables (slightly better).
       has_alpha     : 0 = RGB (3 channels), 1 = RGBA (4 channels).
       stride        : bytes per row (0 = tightly packed = w * pixel_bytes).
                        Allows BMP-like padded data without repacking.

   unsigned char *wtpc_decode_mem(const unsigned char *data, int data_len,
       int *w, int *h, int *out_quality, int *out_comp);
     Decode a WTPC bitstream from memory. Returns malloc'd pixel buffer
     (w*h*3 for RGB, w*h*4 for RGBA). Caller must free().
       data          : input WTPC bitstream bytes.
       data_len      : number of bytes in 'data'.
       w, h          : output image dimensions.
       out_quality   : quality level used for encoding (may be NULL).
       out_comp      : number of color components: 3 = RGB, 4 = RGBA (may be NULL).

   int wtpc_encode_file(const char *out_path, const unsigned char *rgb,
       wtpc_enc_info *info, int w, int h, int target_bytes, int quality,
       int chroma_420, int huffman_mode, int huf_extra_ctx, int has_alpha, int stride);
     Same as wtpc_encode_mem but writes directly to a file.
     Returns 0 on success, -1 on error.

   unsigned char *wtpc_decode_file(const char *in_path,
       int *w, int *h, int *out_quality, int *out_comp);
     Same as wtpc_decode_mem but reads from a file.

   === Build-time options ===
     #define WTPC_NO_STDIO        : exclude file I/O functions.
     #define DEBUG_WAVELET        : dump wavelet coefficient images (needs stb).
     #define STANDARD_CDF97       : enable standard CDF 9/7 K-scaling.
     #define BAC_USE_TABLE        : use 64 KB reciprocal lookup table for
                                    BAC division (~+1-3% speed, 64 KB memory).
                                    Default: 64-bit integer division.
     #define WTPC_TUNE_PARAMS     : mutable quantization tables for grid-search tuning.
     #define WTPC_TUNE_CTX        : tune ebcot contexts
     #define WTPC_NO_SIMD         : do not use sse/avx/neon intrinsics.
     #define WTPC_RC_ONLY_LESS_THAN_TARGET : rate control never overshoots
                                    target_bytes (picks the largest size <= target
                                    instead of the closest). Implied by
                                    WTPC_TUNE_PARAMS.

You can retrain quantization parameters and Huffman tables on your own dataset. Enable WTPC_TUNE_PARAMS, set param ranges in param_cfg, and run tuning (wtpc -T) and/or Huffman table generation (wtpc -G). But note that format become incompatible with WTPC release version.

Benchmark: WTPC vs JPEG vs JPEG 2000 vs JPEG XL

Test image: lena256.png (256x256, 24-bit RGB)
Target range: 200 B -- 36 KB
Metrics: PSNR (dB, higher is better), ssimulacra2 (higher is better)
Full results: results.md

Best Codec by Target Size (by PSNR)

Target Best Codec Size PSNR ssimulacra2
200 B WTPC 4:2:0 EBCOT 201 B 19.62 -60.88
400 B WTPC 4:2:0 EBCOT 401 B 22.02 -40.36
600 B WTPC 4:2:0 EBCOT 600 B 23.10 -24.06
800 B WTPC 4:2:0 EBCOT 806 B 23.92 -9.82
1 KB WTPC 4:2:0 EBCOT 1406 B 25.85 18.31
2 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 2002 B 27.09 33.86
3 KB WTPC 4:2:0 EBCOT 3008 B 28.43 49.49
4 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 4002 B 29.53 57.75
5 KB WTPC 4:2:0 EBCOT 4996 B 30.51 64.06
6 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 5990 B 31.43 68.88
8 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 8000 B 33.03 74.84
10 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 10014 B 34.32 79.55
13 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 13017 B 35.85 83.84
15 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 15002 B 36.61 85.84
18 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 17985 B 37.67 88.32
22 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 22061 B 38.95 90.20
28 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 27981 B 40.57 92.20
36 KB WTPC 4:4:4 EBCOT 36122 B 42.43 93.83

Speed Summary (lena 256x256, representative q=244)

Codec Encode (ms) Decode (ms)
WTPC EBCOT 4:4:4 7 7
WTPC Huffman 4:4:4 3 1
WTPC EBCOT 4:2:0 5 5
WTPC Huffman 4:2:0 2 1
JPEG 2000 16 5
JPEG XL 104 4
JPEG 4 3

See results.md for the complete per-size breakdown, speed measurements across all quality levels, mermaid charts, and raw data.

Visual Comparison (lena 256x256)

Click any image to view full size.

1.4 KB -- thumbnail target (worst quality)

WTPC EBCOT WTPC Huffman JPEG 2000 JPEG XL JPEG

6 KB -- preview (mid quality)

WTPC EBCOT WTPC Huffman JPEG 2000 JPEG XL JPEG

13 KB -- good quality

WTPC EBCOT WTPC Huffman JPEG 2000 JPEG XL JPEG

36 KB -- best quality

WTPC EBCOT WTPC Huffman JPEG 2000 JPEG XL JPEG

200 B -- 1.2 KB -- ultra-low bitrates (JPEG XL cannot reach this range)

Size WTPC EBCOT JPEG 2000 JPEG
200 B -
400 B -
600 B -
800 B -
1000 B
1200 B

AVIF --speed 6 vs WTPC (best ssim2) — mid-speed AVIF vs best WTPC at equal file sizes

Size AVIF (--speed 6) WTPC (best by ssim2)
~726 B
1 KB
1.4 KB
2 KB
4 KB
16 KB
36 KB

Interesting Links

Image Datasets