For what its worth, the website itself also isn't great.
Had to turn off Enhanced Tracking Protection mode to not get text that scrolled off the screen, and then was met with weird fonts.
WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
281–290 of 411 posts
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#282I find it interesting how many comments here (presumably from "tech guys") confirm what the author wrote: > So there is a real issue with the design priorities of image algos from tech guys who clearly lack historical and artistic background, and don’t talk to artists, who anyway have largely decided that they were above science, maths and other menial materialistic concerns. I am a tech guy, and when a photographer…
While I agree with the rational component of the article (webp may be inappropriate for artistic photos) I had to force myself to read it. The "t" in the font screws me up completely, I tried twice to wipe the screen of my phone then thought that maybe it's a background picture getting in the way. So overall I find author's aesthetic sense very questionable which contrasts with his high-moral-ground tone.
For me it's the horrible layout. For God's sake, stop making narrow columns of text. Having the text take up most of my monitor is much more pleasant to read.
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I checked those images on a Macbook 16 M2 Max (standard P3-1600 nits preset), Chrome 120.0.6099.109. All of the WebP images had pretty bad posterization, while JPEG examples did not. Edit: You have to actually click for a full size image to see the truth. Those inline images had pretty bad compression artefacts, even the supposed lossless versions. So https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/20... (f…
The first link in your Edit 2 section (the JPEG) one is broken, it should be https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/20...
Thanks! Unfortunately I can't change it anymore.
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#284Can I just say how happy I am to see the "ct" and "st" ligatures in the article text? I know that took the author extra effort to provide.
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with the rational component of the article (webp may be inappropriate for artistic photos) I had to force myself to read it. The "t" in the font screws me up completely, I tried twice to wipe the screen of my phone then thought that maybe it's a background picture getting in the way. So overall I find author's aesthetic sense very questionable which contrasts with his high-moral-ground tone.
For me it's the horrible layout. For God's sake, stop making narrow columns of text. Having the text take up most of my monitor is much more pleasant to read.
I think the opposite. When text in a webpage takes up all my monitor's width, I go into Developer Tools and manually add a max-width rule so that I can read the text comfortably.
And AFAIK, all HCI literature seems to agree with me.
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#286I opened the first two pictures in separate tabs and switched quickly between them. There is zero difference. Tried it on two different monitors, Chrome and Firefox. Same with the pictures of the guy at the end. EDIT: The last comparison is webp twice, he linked it wrong. Here is the jpg one, still no difference: https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/20...
I checked those images on a Macbook 16 M2 Max (standard P3-1600 nits preset), Chrome 120.0.6099.109. All of the WebP images had pretty bad posterization, while JPEG examples did not. Edit: You have to actually click for a full size image to see the truth. Those inline images had pretty bad compression artefacts, even the supposed lossless versions. So https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/20... (f…
Addendum:
Tried it with a Windows laptop connected to a Samsung LS32A800 32" 4k display. Laptop has factory default settings. Chrome 120. The monitor is pretty low end for a 4k model.
Monitor's picture settings: Custom, brightness 81, contrast 75, sharpness 60, gamma mode1 and response time fastest.
Switched between those three "Edit 2" images blindly, yet the issues are obvious also on this combination.
The JPEG version looks better compared to WebP ones. (Also, this goes against my prior general assumptions about JPEG vs WebP quality.)
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#287This entire article reminds me of the ones a few decades about about the utter indignity of mp3's, and how us peasants that use it _AT ALL_ or at the very least with any bitrate under 320bps was just criminal. Then proceed to play the flac's in their car. Ok.
This is more like MP3 versus one of those random codecs available for Windows 3.1 that had some big company behind it that one day got bored with codecs and now makes industrial pizza ovens. As google is a major proponent of WebP and Google is known for dropping projects and services with no notice, and the fact that webp gives very little value on the server side and webp creates objectively worse visual presentation, it would be best to consider WebP as deprecated for any new development.
edit: I would also like to note that there is no technical reason to use WebP. The only reason it is used because Google is literally bribing you with "better rankings" for using webp. In other words, it is strictly marketing-driven.
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an extremely hard time perceiving any difference on a 27" 4K monitor. I am not even sure I really see them. The examples are just bad. If you want to show something, screenshot and enlarge it to show the artifacts.
> The examples are just bad. If you want to show something, screenshot and enlarge it to show the artifacts. Yes! Where's the red underlines and diffs? I can see the background banding, but the foreground looks the same at a glance except that some of them look ambiguously "off" in ways that could just be placebo. You'd think a visual artist would be more interested in visual communication and not just a wall of text…
The article is about the background banding.
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an extremely hard time perceiving any difference on a 27" 4K monitor. I am not even sure I really see them. The examples are just bad. If you want to show something, screenshot and enlarge it to show the artifacts.
> The examples are just bad. If you want to show something, screenshot and enlarge it to show the artifacts. Yes! Where's the red underlines and diffs? I can see the background banding, but the foreground looks the same at a glance except that some of them look ambiguously "off" in ways that could just be placebo. You'd think a visual artist would be more interested in visual communication and not just a wall of text…
I think he was complaining specifically about the background banding.
Re: WebP is so great except it's not (2021)
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is complaining about the consequences of recompressing images, which are also black and white and have a huge gradient background, and also, the post is full of flaws. I don’t know, Hacker News is better as less of a Hacker Rants.
> which are also black and white and have a huge gradient background That's the entire point of this article. Rather than picking a dozen different kinds of images at random, it considers the problem within the very specific context of actual photographs, made by actual professional photographers, with specific (yet not uncommon) artistic/stylistic choices. It's like showing why an audio codec sucks for cellos. Yes,…
The author just makes a ton of mistakes. Many photographers competently shoot and store RAW, and many know better than to mass convert low quality JPEGs to WebP. It’s HIS work, he can choose to make as few or as many mistakes with presenting it as possible. So I don’t think he’s representative of most photographers. It’s a technical discipline.
I guess the more technically interesting POV would be to suggest a solution. Probably he should use the black and white profile with HEIF and serve the WebP only to search engines, using the modern image tag.
Or, you could put Y information in the unused UV plane for WebP. I guess you could also decompress the original JPEGs better for the purpose of conversion. While not for him, it takes about 100 lines of JavaScript to author a Mobile Safari-compatible image bitstream, which is very little. The MediaCodecs API is great.
Anyway, the rant elevated my knowledge very little. It was more like anti knowledge. Like if you were to integrate the rant into an LLM, it would produce worse recommendations.