Remember the time when everyone claimed that WebP would be "the future" but Safari did not support it and we all stayed with JPG? The good news is that Safari has finally jumped on the WebP bandwagon some time ago and there's no reason not to utilize WebP. Let me share with you the lessons I've learned by converting thousands of images into this format.
Google invented WebP due to the frustration of JPG and PNG's limitations. They were looking for something capable of doing it all small files like JPG transparent like PNG, as well as animations such as GIF. They managed to pull off the shackle.
I switched a client's e-commerce site to WebP and their page load time dropped by about 30%. That's huge when you consider Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. Visitors stuck around longer too - nobody likes waiting for images to load.
If you're serving a lot of images (think thousands per day), the bandwidth savings add up quick. We're talking real money here, not just theoretical improvements.
This was my main concern - would the images look worse? In side-by-side comparisons, I honestly couldn't tell the difference most of the time. Sometimes I had to zoom way in to spot any compression artifacts.
Here's the quick comparison that matters:
| What You Need | JPG | PNG | WebP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lossy (photos) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Lossless (perfect quality) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Transparency | Nope | Yes | Yes |
| Animation | Nope | Nope | Yes |
| File size | Medium | Big | Smallest |
The conversion process is straightforward. Our tool handles the most common scenarios:
This used to be the big pain point. Not anymore. Here's where we stand:
At this point, the only people who can't view WebP are using really old browsers. We're talking Internet Explorer levels of old.
While support isn't universal, you are able to offer an JPG backup to that small proportion of users using old browsers:
The browser automatically picks the format it can handle. Modern browsers get WebP, old ones get JPG. Everyone's happy.
I've discovered that 75-85% of high-quality works well for the majority of photos. You can enjoy huge file size reductions without any visible quality loss. Lower the resolution if you truly want to squeeze every bit However, you should try it on real screens first.
Yes, recent versions of Photoshop handle it natively. Older versions might need a plugin. GIMP works too. Honestly, most modern image software does at this point.
No. WebP is designed for screens. For print work, stick with high-resolution PNG or TIFF. Or whatever your print shop asks for.
AVIF is even newer and compresses even better. But browser support is still catching up. If you want to be safe, WebP is the sweet spot right now. AVIF might be the next move in a year or two.
WebP isn't just hype - it delivers real improvements over JPG and PNG for web use. Browser support is basically universal now. The conversion is simple. There's nothing to lose except if you have to enable Internet Explorer (and if you have to we're sorry). Try it with a couple of images and then see the difference in size of files for yourself. It's quite convincing once you've seen these figures.