As you go through daily activities, you may need to interact with content that requires the use of images.
This may be in your everyday personal life, in your business, or in your formal job. You encounter images such as PNG, WebP, JPEG, and many other file formats.
At some point, you may need to interconvert between these file images depending on your need.
This article informs you on how to go about that and many other aspects of interacting with images, especially in the WebP file format.
Let’s get started!
What Are WebP Images?
WebP images are the most modern file format into which you can convert images. It allows for the use of high-quality images while working on the internet.
WebP file images are better quality and quickly load when working on the internet.
They are therefore the most preferred since they increase the speed of webpage loading enhancing user experience for more straightforward navigation through a web page.
Brief History of WebP Image
On September 30th, 2010, Google announced a new file format for images called WebP. WebP was intended to replace PNG and JPEG image file formats as it produces true-color images that are smaller and almost similar in quality to the previous versions.
The file format continued to improve, and as of October 3rd, 2011, it could support other extensions such as animation, tiling, and ICC profiling. By November 2011, the format has advanced into a lossless version.
Five years later, Apple tried adding the WebP file format to MACOS and iOS beta versions, but it was soon removed, only to be added to Safari Version 14 four years later.
How Does WebP Work?
WebP is designed to work on the internet. The file format allows for both lossy and lossless compression of images as its coding system balances the web images’ quality and practicality. Although the image is compressed to a smaller size, it does not lose its quality.
This allows for more straightforward navigation because the smaller size reduces the bandwidth strain.
The WebP support has a 24-bit color that allows for animation, which has become the famously known GIF images.
This enhances the visual impact of the WebP file format. Some animated formats are so small that it requires even fewer bytes.
Main Features of WebP Images
Some of the main features of WebP images include;
Lossy and lossless compression– This feature is the most prominent feature of WebP images, allowing for the images to be compressed into smaller sizes. However, they retain the exact quality specifications as the images are compressed into the JPEG format.
Transparency- The WebP format supports transparency because it has 22% additional bytes that allow for this phenomenon, otherwise known as an alpha channel.
Animation- This is another unique feature of WebP images that allows for dramatic movements and pauses in the images accomplishing the goal of animation.
Metadata Information- Another critical feature of WebP images is that they may have metadata stored in either XMP or Exif formats.
What are the Main Benefits of Using WebP?
Below are a few benefits of using WebP format for your web images;
Smaller images that allow for faster loading of sites– The WebP file format is an excellent alternative for use over the internet. The file format compresses the images into smaller sizes while at the same time maintaining the quality of the images.
Minimized file storage of WebP images- The smaller size of the WebP images allows for minimized storage space. This is an advantage while working on the web as it reduces the loading time on the website user interface.
Better SEO ranking- The WebP images have a high SEO ranking due to high quality, smaller, and easily loadable size which makes it favorable with Google ranking. The page speed ranking is an advantage to page performance measurements.
What Browsers Natively Support WebP?
The most commonly used browsers support the WebP format. These include Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera Mini, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
Also, apart from Google Chrome, all other Chromium-supported browsers support the WebP file format. The WebP advantages make it the most preferred to other formats such as PNG and JPEG because of its ability to increase the browsing speed.
Some browsers will support either lossy file formats, lossless file formats, or animated file formats.
Others will support either two or all of the file formats. Google Chrome is an example of a browser that will support all file formats.
WebP vs. JPG vs. PNG
WebP Vs. JPG
WebP images are smaller by 25-34% than JPEG images. However, the quality index remains the same per Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) standards. The lossless images also have a higher transparency due to the increased bytes at a lower cost.
Another advantage is that WebP allows for the animation of images while JPEG does not. People can use GIFs on the web due to this advantage of WebP above the other file formats.
WebP Vs. PNG
WebP images are 26% smaller than PNG at the same quality standards. Thus, they are easily downloadable, making navigation through the website faster.
The other comparison is that WebP enables image animation, which is not the case with the PNG file formats.
How to Convert WebP Images with Ease
To interconvert between WebP, JPEG, and PNG images, please follow the few steps as outlined below;
WebP to JPG with AnyWebP
Overview of the AnyWebP
AnywebP is an online tool that converts WebP images to other file format images. To access the tool, please click here.
Steps to Convert Webp to JPG with AnyWebP
Follow the steps below to perform the conversion;
- Prepare the WebP image for conversion.
- Access the AnyWebP page.
- Drag or click to upload your image to the page.
- Select the āconvert to JPGā option.
- Download the image in the new file format.
JPG to WebP with CloudConvert
Overview of the CloudConvert
Cloudconvert is an online WebP converter that interconverts WebP files to other formats. The files may be images, documents, archives, ebooks, or videos.
With just a click button, you are able to access the files from your storage, upload, convert to the desired file format, and download the file in the new file format.
Steps to convert JPG to WebP with CloudConvert
In order to convert the JPG file format into WebP, follow the steps given below;
- Head to the CloudConvert page.
- Select the option āConvert JPG to WebP.ā
- Click the button āSelect Fileā to select your JPG image from the computer.
- Upload the image.
- Click on āconvert.ā
- Download and save the converted image.
Will WebP Replace Jpg or PNG Someday?
While WebP outperforms both JPG and PNG and although it was specifically created to replace the other two image file formats, it is likely that it will only partially replace them.
There are some instances in which these other image file formats outperform WebP.
For example, for lossy compression, JPG has better images of high-fidelity than WebP.
Thus, all the file formats will always be in use even in the coming days, and the user will have to choose the file format that best suits their needs.
Also read: How To Convert EML to PDF
Conclusion
WebP images are an indispensable modern-day breakthrough when it comes to dealing with images.
They are a better alternative to other commonly known image file formats such as PNG and JPG.
This is especially true when dealing with images on the internet.
Good thing, this article gives you the various ways of interconversion of WebP images so that you can work efficiently with the images and increase the speed of your webpages.