WebP is a new image format that provides lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. WebP lossless images are 28% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller in size compared to JPEG images at equivalent SSIM index. WebP supports losseless transparency (also known as alpha channel) with just 22% additional bytes. WebP also supports features such as animation, ICC color profile, 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.
Google introduced a new mode in WebP to compress images losslessly, and support for transparency – also known as alpha channel – in both the lossless and lossy modes.
With these new modes, you can now use WebP to better compress all types of images on the web. Photographic images typically encoded as JPEG can be encoded in WebP lossy mode to achieve smaller file size. Icons and graphics can be encoded better in WebP lossless mode than in PNG. WebP lossy with alpha can be used to create transparent images that have minimal visual degradation, yet are much smaller in file size. Animations compressed as GIFs can use animation support in WebP.
You can find a more detailed compression study for these modes here and sample images in the WebP-Gallery.
Downloading and Installing WebP
WebP is supported by a variety of tools. Image enthusiasts should use one of the many software products that support WebP. Such products include GIMP, Paint.NET and XnConvert. If you use Adobe Photoshop or Paint.NET for image editing, you can also install the WebP plugin or the WebP plugin for Paint.NET.
The WebP Codec for Windows implements the Windows Imaging Component decoder interface and allows you to open WebP files using Windows Photo Viewer, view WebP thumbnails in Windows Explorer, and support WebP in other programs that use WIC (such as Microsoft Office 2010).