What you should know
WebP was published by Google in 2010 to speed up the web. It offers both a lossy and a lossless mode, plus transparency, at a size generally 25–35% below an equivalent JPEG or PNG.
All modern browsers read it, and most publishing platforms accept it. It remains less recognised by office software and print pipelines, however.
Strengths
- Markedly reduced size at comparable quality
- Lossy and lossless modes in one format
- Transparency and animation supported
- Native playback in all recent browsers
Limitations to know
- Uneven support in retouching and office software
- Still refused by some services that require JPEG or PNG
- The gain disappears if the source is already heavily compressed
- EXIF metadata less well preserved than in JPEG
When to use it
Choose WebP for any image published on a website: it is the best current trade-off between quality and loading speed. To send a photo to an administrative service or open it in old software, convert to JPEG or PNG.
Quality, size and compatibility
At equal visual quality, lossy WebP is often a third lighter than JPEG. In lossless mode it stays lighter than PNG. From WebP, converting to JPEG means re-encoding: start from the best possible source.
Frequently asked questions
- Is WebP accepted everywhere?
- On the web, yes: all modern browsers display it. Offline, some software and print shops do not handle it yet and prefer JPEG or PNG.
- Does WebP replace JPEG?
- For web publishing, increasingly so. For photo archiving and printing, JPEG remains the reference thanks to its compatibility and metadata.