2020.04.18 14:16 "Re: [Tiff] Updating zlib library", by Paavo Helde

interesting. From my own perspective, I'd be more interested in *faster* alternatives to zlib than slightly better compression rates. Looking quickly at the links you provide, libdeflate advertize greater speeds, but I'd be interested in seing benchmarks.

Speed is definitely an important factor. I have always noticed that libtiff's own LZW compression is much faster than zlib's deflate.

LZW is not very useful for 16-bit data (our main usage case). In our experience LZW often tends to increase the size of our 16-bit images, instead of compressing them.

Zlib has a compile-time FASTEST option which is significantly faster than Z_BEST_SPEED (and compression rate is a bit worse). Alas, using FASTEST requires a special compilation of zlib which does not support normal regimes any more.

Just my 2 cents

Paavo