JPEG XL in Photoshop
Yes, Photoshop opens and saves .jxl files by itself — since version 26.8, June 2025. It just isn't where most people look: not in Export As, but in File › Save a Copy. Here is the exact route, what each option really does to your file, and what to do if you're stuck on an older version.
by Robert Castillo · Published
The short answer
Photoshop has opened and saved JPEG XL on its own since version 26.8, released in June 2025. Adobe's feature summary for that release said it plainly: you could now “open, edit, and save images in AVIF and JPEG XL (JXL) formats”, with lossy and lossless compression and native HDR support. No plugin, and no detour through Camera Raw.
Every version from 26.8 onwards has it. In October 2026 that means the whole Photoshop 2026 line, from 27.0 to the current 27.11 (see Adobe's release notes), plus the long-term-support release of Photoshop 2025 (26.11). To see which one you have, open Help › About Photoshop on Windows or Photoshop › About Photoshop on a Mac.
What trips people up is where the format lives. JPEG XL is not in Export As, Quick Export or Save for Web. It sits in File › Save a Copy, next to TIFF and PNG, and in File › Save As only when the document is a single flattened layer, because Save As lists just the formats that keep everything in your file.
How to save a JPEG XL from Photoshop
Check the version
You need 26.8 or later. If you're behind, update from the Creative Cloud desktop app. JPEG XL was a beta feature from April 2025 and became standard in the June release.
Open Save a Copy
Go to File › Save a Copy and pick JPEG XL in the format menu. A copy is written; the document you're working on stays open and unchanged, layers and all.
Choose the compression
In the options dialog, set Color Compression to Lossless to keep every pixel exactly, or to Lossy for a far smaller file. Only Lossy shows a Quality slider, which tops out at 100 (“Maximum”).
Reopen and look
Open the new .jxl once and check it at 100% before you delete anything. With Lossy, look at skies, skin and fine texture first: that's where compression shows.
At launch, users pointed out that JPEG XL appears neither in Export As nor in Save for Web (Legacy), so there is no side-by-side preview to compare quality settings. Adobe's release notes since then don't announce a change: the April 2026 release (27.6) mentions “expanded support for modern file formats” without naming any.
Adobe also hasn't published a help page for the JPEG XL dialog itself. The option names here are the ones users quote from the English interface in Adobe's own forums; if a future version adds settings, the route through Save a Copy will still be the same.
Lossless, Lossy and Quality: what they do to the file
Photoshop's dialog is short, and Adobe doesn't say how its Quality scale maps onto the JPEG XL encoder. What we can tell you is what each choice means in practice, and when each one is the right call.
| Setting | What it does | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Lossless | Stores the document's pixels exactly. No Quality slider. | Masters, anything you'll open and save again |
| Lossy, high Quality | Throws away detail the eye is unlikely to notice. Files shrink several times over. | Finished photos to share, galleries, client previews |
| Lossy, low Quality | Smaller still; artefacts start to show on gradients and texture. | Thumbnails and drafts, after checking at 100% |
| Bit depth | Not documented: Adobe doesn't say whether 16- or 32-bit documents keep their depth. | If it matters, check the saved file in another program |
Adobe doesn't document whether a 16- or 32-bit document is written at that depth. Its file formats overview lists JPEG XL among the 32-bit formats, alongside PSD, PSB, TIFF, OpenEXR, Radiance and Portable Float Map, but a user reported in November 2025 that Photoshop 2026 still couldn't save it at 16 bits. If it matters, check by opening the file in another program.
One case from Adobe's forum shows a related trap. A user whose printer only accepted classic JPEG found that Photoshop offered nothing but JPEG XL: the document was in 16-bit mode, and plain JPEG is 8-bit only, so it disappears from Save a Copy while JPEG XL stays. Switching to 8 Bits/Channel brought JPEG back.
Measured: what those choices weigh
To put sizes on those choices we encoded two public-domain photos with libjxl 0.12.0, the reference JPEG XL encoder, with settings analogous to Photoshop's two modes: lossless from the pixels, and lossy at two quality levels. This is an approximation with libjxl, not Photoshop itself. Adobe uses its own encoder settings, and users in Adobe's forum report Photoshop's files coming out several times larger than other apps', so read these as what the format can do, not what Photoshop will write.
| File | Photo A · 14 MP | Photo B · 45 MP |
|---|---|---|
| Original JPEG | 8.38 MB | 12.02 MB |
| PNG (lossless, maximum compression) | 14.49 MB | 32.97 MB |
| JPEG XL Lossless from the pixels | 10.25 MB | 18.68 MB |
| JPEG XL Lossy, distance 1.0 (≈ libjxl quality 90) | 0.99 MB | 2.91 MB |
| JPEG XL Lossy, distance 2.0 (≈ libjxl quality 79) | 0.50 MB | 1.32 MB |
| JPEG re-packed into JPEG XL (not possible in Photoshop) | 7.34 MB | 9.30 MB |
The surprise is the third row. When a picture started life as a JPEG, Photoshop's Lossless option keeps the decoded pixels exactly — compression artefacts included — and the result can be bigger than the JPEG you opened: 22% bigger for photo A and 55% for photo B. It's still 29–43% smaller than a PNG of the same pixels, so it makes a sensible master for edited work. It just isn't a way to shrink a folder of JPEGs.
The last row is the one that is. libjxl can re-pack a JPEG's own compressed data without decoding it, and give you the original file back byte for byte — we checked both photos. That saved 12% on photo A and 23% on photo B, and around 20% across the 16 photos of our JPEG comparison. Photoshop, Lightroom and GIMP all decode to pixels first, so none of them can do this; our JPG to JPEG XL converter and cjxl on the command line can.
On the lossy side, distance 1.0 scored 84.8 on SSIMULACRA2 for photo A, where 85 means differences an average viewer won't notice even comparing in place at 1:1. A JPEG of the same pixels at quality 90, made with libjpeg-turbo, weighed 1.52 MB and scored 80.8. On the busier photo B the margin narrowed: distance 1.0 was 41% smaller than the quality-90 JPEG but scored slightly lower (77.2 against 78.6), so detailed photos deserve a notch more Quality.
HDR and 32-bit documents
JPEG XL is one of the few formats that can keep HDR values without the bulk of a 32-bit TIFF. Adobe's formats overview puts it in the 32-bit list, with a note to save those documents through Save As; as noted above, whether the file keeps that depth isn't documented, so check an HDR export before relying on it.
Seeing HDR on screen is a separate matter. In the versions we checked, Adobe's Camera Raw HDR guide tells you to switch on Precise color management for HDR display under Preferences (Settings on a Mac) › Technology Previews before Photoshop shows HDR content correctly, and you need an HDR-capable display for it to matter at all.
Camera Raw is the other door. Since Camera Raw 16.0 (October 2023) its Save Image button can write JPEG XL, with an HDR Output box under Color Space. If your edit starts as a raw file, saving the JPEG XL straight from Camera Raw skips a round trip through Photoshop's document.
On an older Photoshop
If you can't update to 26.8, what works depends on your version and on whether you're on Windows or a Mac.
Photoshop 2024 to 26.7
With Camera Raw 16 or later, a .jxl opens — but through the Camera Raw dialog. Click Open there to get a normal document. Saving goes through Camera Raw's Save Image button, not Save As.
Photoshop 2020–2023 on Windows
The free JpegXlFormat plugin adds open and save: copy jpegxlformat.8bi into Photoshop's Plug-ins folder and restart. Lossless and lossy, 8 and 16-bit, ICC profiles, Exif/XMP, transparency. Last code change: February 2025.
Older versions on a Mac
We found no maintained Mac plugin. Convert the file first — JXL to PNG keeps every pixel — edit, and convert back if you need a .jxl at the end.
One warning about the plugin's own instructions: to stop Camera Raw intercepting .jxl files, its README suggests renaming Camera Raw.8bi. That disables Camera Raw for everything, raw files included, which most photographers won't want. Leave it alone unless you know you never use Camera Raw.
Common problems and their fixes
| What happens | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| JPEG XL isn't in the Save As list | The document has layers; Save As only lists formats that keep them | Use File › Save a Copy |
| No JPEG XL anywhere | Photoshop older than 26.8 | Update, or see the section above |
| Not in Export As or Save for Web | Not offered there when it launched | Save a Copy; for folders, a batch tool |
| Only JPEG XL is offered, plain JPEG is missing | 16-bit document; JPEG is 8-bit only | Image › Mode › 8 Bits/Channel, then save |
| CMYK document won't save as .jxl | Reported since June 2025 | Convert a copy to RGB, or deliver TIFF for print |
| A .jxl opens in Camera Raw | Usually a Photoshop older than 26.8 | Click Open in Camera Raw, or update |
| Someone can't open the .jxl you sent | Their software doesn't read it yet | Send a JPEG, or point them to a viewer |
A rare one: during the beta, a few deliberately unusual test files from the official libjxl conformance set — spot colours, CMYK layers, premultiplied alpha — wouldn't open. Ordinary photos are not affected, but if a .jxl from a print workflow refuses to open, decode it to PNG with djxl or our viewer and carry on.