Is WebP really better than JPEG? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#31

Post by whywhywhywhy » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

HenryKissinger wrote: post #4

I make a lot of memes for Reddit with MS Paint. I tend to avoid WebP because of compatibility issues. Neither Reddit's native image host nor Imgur allows WebP files, and I save memes using images from multiple formats (e.g. a jpg, a png, and a WebP) in jpg or png to avoid that. When a WebP file is saved into jpg or png Paint gives an error message about how this will erase all transparency, but for my purposes that i…

I mean Photoshop doesn't even support it either so every encounter I have with this file format has been an exercise in frustration and honestly would have preferred it if it just went away and was replace with something companies are free to implement safely.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#32

Post by crazygringo » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #16

chrome keeps changing downloaded images to webP which is annoyin af. can't even find a way to disable it

It's not and you can't. The website is service up the images as webP. Chrome is just giving you what the website gives you, there's nothing to "disable".

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#33

Post by karamanolev » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

I'm surprised this doesn't include Google Guetzli (https://github.com/google/guetzli) in the comparison. In my experience trying to optimize product images for an eCommerce site, this provided the best compression. Yes, it's ridiculously slow, but for encode-once-transmit-often scenarios, it's perfectly usable.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#34

Post by izacus » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #22

Does anyone know how these compare with the HEIC format that it seems my iPhone now uses by default? Is that non-mainstream, or otherwise not fit for comparison?

It's a proprietary patent-encumbered format which isn't really widely supported in the web browsers.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#35

Post by tyingq » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #3

As someone who hosts images on their site, what is the best software (preferably open source) one can use to compress JPEG images imported from a digital camera? I would be glad to serve only JPEGs and dispense with WebP versions and simplify my site html. A straightforward encoding of a JPEG into a WebP (using GIMP) does give me an almost 1/3rd reduction in file size, which is not insignificant.

Others have mentioned you're using 2 lossy formats. You would probably get a similar end file size with jpegoptim. Compile it with mozjpeg for even smaller sizes.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#36

Post by chrisbrandow » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #22

Does anyone know how these compare with the HEIC format that it seems my iPhone now uses by default? Is that non-mainstream, or otherwise not fit for comparison?

I’d be curious about that as well. I made my own minor comparisons, and heif did well, but there are a ton of possible pitfalls my comparison may have been subject to so I’d love to see a comparison by someone with expertise

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#37

Post by mrob » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

pixelbath wrote: post #9

Subjectively, I'd say at those settings the WebP versions look slightly worse, though they don't suffer from the blocking artifacts native to JPEG. For the images I serve on my sites, a few KB here and there aren't going to make a huge difference, and I'd rather avoid the hassle of serving content that isn't universally supported.

In most cases I prefer the WebP versions, but the JPEG formats handle chroma noticeably better. E.g. look at the purple band on the rightmost helmet in the 500 pixel version of Kodim 5. WebP reduces the saturation by excessive blurring. CJPEG handles this image best IMO.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#38

Post by theandrewbailey » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

mrob wrote: post #24

Is there something wrong with the AVIF decoder's chroma upscaling? E.g. look at "Kodim 3", where the colored hats overlap each other. There's severe blocking, where I'd expect blurring instead. All the other formats blur, which is much less distracting.

I've noticed that too. I've been testing AVIF, and the reference encoder[0] defaults to 4:4:4 (no chroma downsampling) if you don't tell it otherwise. I tried 4:2:0 and it looked horrible, but the size hit for 4:4:4 wasn't bad and looked much better.

[0] https://github.com/AOMediaCodec/libavif

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#39

Post by bzb3 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #32

buboard wrote: post #16

chrome keeps changing downloaded images to webP which is annoyin af. can't even find a way to disable it

It's not and you can't. The website is service up the images as webP. Chrome is just giving you what the website gives you, there's nothing to "disable".

You could remove webp from the Accept header so the web server thinks your browser can't interpret webp. Not guaranteed to work, obviously.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#40

Post by LinuxBender » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #16

chrome keeps changing downloaded images to webP which is annoyin af. can't even find a way to disable it

Perhaps a site is giving you a different version of a file based on your user-agent? Try changing your user-agent and see if that changes. Or contact the website and ask them.