What is WebP? Google’s Groundbreaking Image Format

Everything you need to know about Google’s revolutionary image format, WebP.

The WebP image format was developed by Google in 2010. It’s an image format that offers significantly smaller file sizes than other popular image formats like JPEG and PNG. WebP images are often used on the web due to their smaller file size, which can speed up page loading times. Google has been working on improving this image format and its support in web browsers and image editing software. In 2012, Google released an updated version of WebP that included support for lossless compression and transparency. WebP images are now supported in all major web browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari. It is also supported by many popular image editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, and ImageMagick. The maximum size of WebP images is 16,383 x 16,383 pixels.

The advantages of WebP

The advantages include smaller file sizes, faster page loading times, and lossless compression. These images are often up to 25% smaller than JPEG images and up to 30% smaller than PNG images. This can speed up page loading times on websites that use a lot of images. WebP also offers lossless compression, which means that the image quality is not reduced when the image is compressed. This can be helpful when editing or sharing these images.

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The disadvantages of WebP

The disadvantages include limited support in old web browsers and image editing software, and a higher compression ratio than JPEG images. WebP is not supported by as many web browsers or image editing programs as JPEG or PNG. This can make it difficult to use WebP images on websites or in programs that do not support it.

WebP and animation

Google has been working on adding WebP support for animation, and we hope to see this feature in future versions. In the meantime, there are workarounds that can be used to create or use animations with WebP.

How to create a WebP image file?

To create a WebP image, you can use a WebP converter tool. There are many converters available online, and most of them are free to use.

To convert an image to WebP format, first open the image in your image editor or converter. Then, select the WebP format and save the image.

Furthermore, many programs already support WebP, so you can also create them directly from tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Sketch.

How to use WebP image files on your website?

To use WebP files on your website, you first need to upload the files to a web server. You can then use the WebP image tag to display the images on your website. The WebP image tag looks like this:

<img src=”webp-image-file-url”>

You can also use the WebP file format in your CSS stylesheets. To do this, you need to specify the WebP file format using the image-format property. The following code snippet shows how to do this:

img {

image-format: webp;

}

Is WebP open-source?

Yes, WebP is open-source. It is released under a BSD-style license, which allows for free use and redistribution. So basically anyone can work on the format and make improvements to it.


That was our short overview of the new WebP image format from Google. I hope that it was helpful to you. Maybe you are now considering using this format to improve the performance of your website. Just let me know. For further information, just take a look here. You can discover more web design-related posts on WE AND THE COLOR.

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Source: weandthecolor.com

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