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Is WebP really better than JPEG?

siipo.la

301–310 of 319 posts

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Animations should just be videos. No reason for an animated image format, an animated image is just a video with no audio track.

The only advantage I can see it where videos are not allowed to autoplay you would want a gif to play somethig small.

For me is all about sharing. The website itself usually displays the "video" as if it was a gif, but as soon as you go to share anywhere, you're sharing a video on platforms that handle it like a video. No looping, seek controls, complicated UI, etc. I just want to post a photo that auto plays and loops anywhere. I don't are about the internals, but I want all applications to recognize that file as an animated photo, not a video.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#302

It's all about Google wanting control. Their own file formats, their own protocols, AMP, not showing URLs in Chrome. The goal is to turn the web into a closed Google ecosystem.

How does a royalty-free codec with an open source implementation turn the web into a closed ecosystem? Not that I trust Google, but in this case I don't see the harm.

How does a royalty-free codec with an open source implementation turn the web into a closed ecosystem?

Google did it with Android. It's "open source", but try to do something without Google Play Services.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#303
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS, any screenshot taken while iOS background blur is active will balloon from 0.15MB to 15.0MB, because iOS uses PNG for screenshots and blurred backgrounds are apparently irreducible by PNG. Does the WebP format permit bounded areas of an image to be represented at lower fidelity with a smooth blur, so that the blurred-background effect can be stored and retrieved using fewer pixels and a blur algorithm rather…

At that point you might as well use something like PDF, where you can choose exactly what image format you need for each region. Put a JPG as the blurred background, then put a transparent PNG as the foreground for text and buttons in your screenshot.

macOS screenshots appeared to be PDF natively for the first few years, which made sense since their window compositor was operating what appeared to be a PDF canvas in-memory. They're still clearly using a PDF-like canvas, since there are certain windows that aren't included in screenshots — but what's underneath them is — which is not possible without a layered canvas somewhere. I think after the first decade they stopped offering .PDF screenshots and switched to .PNG now, and based on other replies alongside yours, it's likely they'll be replaced by HEIF soon, but it bodes well for improvements here that their screenshot engine has access to the original layers.

(This isn't just relevant to Apple users — imagine if Photoshop's PNG/HEIF encoder could export blurred segments with lower byte density than unblurred segments, for example. Folks generally are not used to thinking about fidelity-sensitive image encoding, and that's why this is so interesting to me.)

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, JPEG 2000, which was standardized, in, well, 2000, already has transparency support, and 20 years later still have no meaningful support. Every iOS and macOS device supports JPEG 2000… that should be pretty meaningful.

That accounts for significantly less than half the whole market, and half the mobile and desktop markets if you split it out. If it's also supported by other OS's and headsets and browsers that bring it significantly closer to 100%, then maybe we have something meaningful.

Well, 2 billion devices is a meaningful number of devices, no matter how you slice it.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#305
post #71

I just relaunched a website that makes extensive use of photographic collages that necessitate alpha backgrounds. They were previously shipping "retina-grade", multi-megabyte images all over, a typical page load could easily reach 25mb. I managed to refit it with ` ` tags using WEBP as well as JP2. The latter was a great deal of trouble, it appears that "the community" (notably Gatsby and Contentful) are very happy t…

What was the result of the switch, how heavy is a full page load now?

2.44mb, down from 22.2mb (just checked). And the new site has more, even larger images. https://www.prior.club

Still something like 5x what I would recommend to most folks, but there’s just no getting around a site like this being very photographic.

(Edit) I can’t attribute all of this to next-gen images, also doing lazy load and other tricks.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That accounts for significantly less than half the whole market, and half the mobile and desktop markets if you split it out. If it's also supported by other OS's and headsets and browsers that bring it significantly closer to 100%, then maybe we have something meaningful.

Well, 2 billion devices is a meaningful number of devices, no matter how you slice it.

That's entirely dependent on context. In the context of "can I use this and expect it to work most the time" it's nowhere close enough. All that matters in that respect is percentage of the whole, and at less than half, it's not really much.

As an example, we could talk about the number of connected IoT devices that are supported and up to date, and it's probably in the billions. But compared to the number of connected out of date and unsupported devices, it's likely inconsequential in comparison by metrics of total numbers, percentage of a whole, and importance (alternatively, total number of unsupported and possible exploitable devices does matter, because of what it implies about how they can be used destructively).

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WEBP support has been added to the next version of Safari (14). Good to hear. But that still means it'll still be 1½ years before enough users in the wild are on iOS 14 to make the change without breaking the sites for a large number of people. At least, from what I read, iOS upgrade adoption is very quick compared with other platforms. WebP is something to look forward to on my company's internal projects, but exter…

Safari users seem to update very quickly (based on stats about iOS and MacOS update timelines). I've already got some desktop-oriented websites that are WebP only, and once Safari supports WebP on iOS, I'll finish transitioning them all. The space savings is quite nice for my bandwidth bills (my websites don't have video, so I estimate saving about 20% in bandwidth costs, or approximately $120/month across all of the…

I wouldn’t be able to view any of your sites as I’ve disabled webp in my browser. It always looks blurry to me and if I save an image I can only view it again in a browser.

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#308
post #161
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think by the nature of being the second most used browser, it's worth supporting. You don't have to like supporting it however. https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

It's impossible to test for without buying expensive hardware, so I'll pass.

Use a service like browserstack

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#309
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A used iPod Touch is $35, the same price as a Raspberry Pi. Is a Raspberry Pi "expensive hardware"?

Right, I'll put "Designed for used iPod Touch" in the footer then.

If the browser is the same what difference would it make?

Re: Is WebP really better than JPEG?

#310
As an observer of video codec development, I heard Daala (PVQ) used activity masking to make quantization steps finer (don't discard all detail) in low-contrast areas. I don't know if that's practical in AV1 (a DCT block-based codec).
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