WebP Poses Threat to GIF, JPEG, PNG

LOS ANGELES — Google has announced the addition of lossless compression and transparency encoding to its WebP image format, providing two more advantages over legacy Internet graphics formats.

According to Google, WebP is a new image format that provides both lossless and lossy compression, as well as a range of advanced features, for images used online.

“WebP lossless images are 28 percent smaller in size compared to PNGs,” claims the product’s website. “WebP lossy images are 25-34 percent smaller in size compared to JPEG images at equivalent SSIM index.”

Those are significant achievements, but only two of the benefits of the WebP format; which also supports losseless alpha channel transparency with the addition of 22 percent overhead in additional bytes. Google says the format also supports animation, ICC color profiling, XMP meta-data and tiling.

“Webmasters and web developers can use the WebP image format to create smaller and richer images that can help make the web faster,” the site adds, crediting the power of predictive coding with enabling WebP’s high quality image encoding — a similar process to that used by the VP8 video codec of sister project, WebM, for compressing keyframes.

“Predictive coding uses the values in neighboring blocks of pixels to predict the values in a block, and then encodes only the difference (residual) between the actual values and the prediction,” states a Google rep. “The residuals typically contain many zero values, which can be compressed much more effectively. The residuals are then transformed, quantized and entropy-coded as usual. WebP also uses variable block sizes.”

WebP is natively supported by Google Chrome and the Google Chrome Frame plugin for Internet Explorer, Opera 11.10 and the Android Ice Cream Sandwich mobile OS.

To get started, webmasters and designers can convert their JPEG and PNG images to the WebP format with the cwebp conversion tool for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.

Check out the sample galleries for side-by-side image quality and file size comparisons.

While universal compatibility is some time away, graphics heavy content marketers, such as adult website operators offering many thousands of high resolution images, can use WebP to speed up their content delivery — while cutting costs and improving quality — making this technology an important one to watch.

Related:  

Copyright © 2025 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More News

JuicyAds Wins Trademark Infringement Case Against Fraudulent Domain

JuicyAds has won its World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) case against a website using a similar domain to impersonate the company's site and defraud customers.

Anissa Kate, Jordan Starr Top AEBN for Q2 of 2025

AEBN has published its top-selling stars for the second quarter of 2025, with Anissa Kate landing atop the leaderboard for straight theaters and Jordan Starr heading up the gay rankings.

AEBN Reveals Eva Maxim as Top Trans Star for Q2 of 2025

AEBN has published its top trans stars list for the second quarter of 2025, with Eva Maxim landing atop the leaderboard.

France Reinstates Age Verification Rule for EU Sites

France’s highest court, the Council of State, on Tuesday reinstated age verification rules for EU-based sites under the country’s Security and Regulation of the Digital Space (SREN) law, ruling in favor of the French government and against Hammy Media.

Whisper Fans Joins Pineapple Support as Supporter-Level Sponsor

Whisper Fans has joined the ranks of over 70 adult businesses and organizations committing funds and resources to Pineapple Support.

Utherverse Launches 'Red Light Center' Virtual World

Virtual reality and metaverse technology company Utherverse has launched its new virtual world, RedLightCenter.io.

European Commission Approves AV Guidelines, Unveils Prototype App

The European Commission on Monday released its final, approved guidelines for protecting minors online under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and made public a “white label” age verification app intended to help sites and platforms comply with age verification rules under the DSA.

New Membership Site 'Sluts Corner' Launches

R18 Entertainment has launched a new membership site, SlutsCorner.com.

Show More