Of course, every webmaster wants to have a high loading website. WebP format is one of the solutions to optimize the site and increase its speed. But how and in what way? WebP format saves storage space by reducing the size of PNG and JPEG images without compromising image quality.
WebP is a format developed by Google in 2010. This format compresses images at a high rate while their quality will not change. Webmasters and developers can create very low volume images so your website loads these images faster. This format uses more loss-free compression methods than PNG and JPEG formats.
When we say compression without loss of quality, we mean that all the bits of the original data remain exactly the same after compression. This format helps you compress your images up to 26% more than PNG. On the other hand, with predictive encoding to encode an image, WebP offers JPEG-like quality, while reducing image file sizes from 25 percent to 34 percent.
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Advantages of WebP format
As mentioned earlier, low volume images can make a big difference on your web design. Helps your website load faster. Another advantage of this format is that you can save more bandwidth, especially if your site is full of images, such as food blogs, travel or photography. To better understand these, let’s take a brief look at JPEG and PNG formats.
JPEG or JPG format
This format is great for images with lots of colors and is the preferred option for still images. However in this format due to compression, you will notice a decrease in image quality.
PNG format
This format is great for maintaining image quality even when compressed. This format is suitable for images with large amounts of data and pixels; Such as a variety of logos, text images. However, it is not a good option for photography.
What does WebP do?
WebP combines and delivers the best of both formats. While it offers 25-34% smaller size than PNG and JPEG, it will also manage to maintain image quality. Take a look at the images in Google WebP Gallery. As you can see, the quality difference between the JPEG images on the left and the WebP images on the right is difficult to distinguish.
WebP format flaws
Given the advantages that this image format offers, it is good to mention a number of limitations as well.
- First of all, while some major browsers, including Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, support the WebP format, Safari and Internet Explorer do not.
- Another problem for webmasters who want to use this format for their site is that WordPress does not currently support WebP images. This means that you can not upload WebP files to your WordPress media library. This does not mean that you can not use it, you just need a plugin to do it.