Google creates new image format: WebP

After WebM Google has now WebP: a new image format. We have long and solid colors for GIF animations (logos, vector illustrations, JPEG ...), for many variations of colors (usually pictures) and PNG for high quality and transparent layers, not to mention other formats with vectors. .. Does it need a new format? In view of Google, yes .

The WebP want to be relevant to applications of JPEG, especially for photos. He uses techniques of VP8 video codec to compress the images of frames from a video, only isolated in the case, for a photo. The loading time should be better, since the images will be lighter. The idea is that visual quality is not lost, just reducing the size in bytes of the image, helping to force a reduction in the bandwidth used on the Internet.

According to Google, about 65% of the bytes transmitted over the Internet are related to the images. The images are thus a factor that weighs a lot in loading pages, especially on slow connections - is in poor or even out there, considering mobile connections.

For comparison they took about 1 million different images on the Internet and converted to the format, still in testing. Most images were JPEG. Without losing visual quality perceived, observed on average 39% reduction in file size. Is something significant, and is most noticeable, of course, when dealing with still images uncompressed.

The codes of the compressed image will be encapsulated in a container RIFF , which adds an overhead of only 20 bytes per image, but allows the use of data fields for additional information (such as GPS data, date and time settings so that the photo was taken, etc., the famous EXIF data).

There is a gallery in the comparative project page , including images for download at:

http://code.google.com/intl/pt-BR/speed/webp/gallery.html

As the WebP is still being created, of course without the codec you could not see the results. The images were then placed in PNG to keep the original look of the corresponding WebP, where the goal is to show the difference in loss of quality, not the size in bytes.

In the future WebP should support transparency (alpha channels) and can replace part of PNG. If the format will be successful or not is a question of partnerships and support, regardless of technique. If major manufacturers do not give a damn about the format, it becomes difficult to popular (as occurred with the JPEG2000). In fact the technology used to compress images today has more than a decade, but is so ingrained that it is hard to see it change. The big difference is that Google's name is quite strong, so ...

Google has created a discussion group and a converter , and will be working to support the format in Chrome, providing a patch for WebKit soon.