Copy image? Nope, here’s the link instead.
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I agree with the comic. Saving a webp as an actually useful file format is an extra annoying step.
Half the time it works. Half the time it doesn’t. Idk what the determining factor is but I’ve just got in the habit of doing screenshots. Which I then still have to open another program to paste and save.
What even was the reason for this awful file type ?
How is that the formats fault? Your browser sucks.
My pain isn’t in the browser, it’s with other apps that are still playing catch-up.
A lot of apps have added support now, but there are still edge cases. Animated webp being one. If i send that in a messaging app, usually all the other person sees is the first frame.
It’s absolutely not the fault of the format, I agree, but still a cause of compatibility headaches.
Well, gif format existed before 1998 and the Web was being built with it, whereas now the format exists when things have already been built. It sounds like a demonstration of feature creep. “Oh, so now we want webp instead of gif? Ugh.”
I never had problems with webp. Neither on android nor on my computer. I can copy and paste the images without problems. What kind of software are you guys using?
Uhh, Firefox. I’ll copy the image and paste it to signal, for example. It’s dumb. I didn’t want to save it, I just want to copy and paste it.
Sometimes blorp had problems downloading .webp images, but I’m pretty sure the dev fixed it; i haven’t seen those errors in a long time.
.webm files never embed properly for me in messaging apps. It’s been years, and apparently this is an unsolvable issue for the likes of Microsoft Teams (although at my new job I use Slack now, so I haven’t tried it in a while).
Why are we sending someone to “Extra Hell” for making an improved image format that has better compression and is an overall improvement over all 3 of the existing formats it replaces (jpeg, png, gif)?
Shouldn’t this apply to
everyonethe companies who refused to adopt it, thus breaking every normal image workflow? (Same thing can be said about JXL)Edit: fix vague wording
Because they have a poor user experience with an OS and applications that have chosen not to support it properly, and blame the image format for this
Because it’s Google trying to control not just everything ELSE about the internet, as if that wasn’t enough, but even what image formats we use.
If PNG and JPEG aren’t good enough, which they often are, by the way, JPEG XL is right there.
– Frost
I’d say the knowledge about webp’s benefits is not mainstream at all, I learned about it last week from a random YouTube video. So when people download a file that isn’t working as expected they don’t know who to be mad at so they make memes like this.
Because the reason webp/webm is trash is that it uses proprietary codecs, which some software companies don’t want to include support for. It’s google’s attempt to control every format used on the web.
We already have JXL, which is better than webp at everything it does, it’s not proprietary, and the main reason it’s still not widely supported is because google spent years trying to bury it and intentionally not offering support for it and prioritizing its own webp.
WebP isn’t proprietary. It’s based on the VP9 video codec, which is completely open source and royalty free, and currently maintained by the same people who made AV1.
It’s not an improvement over PNG.
but it has an optional lossless mode that no one uses
No one uses it and even if they did, you’d never know since there isn’t a .webl or .webpl to differentiate lossless.
You know a PNG in lossless, you know a jpg is lossy. webp should just be assumed lossy 100% of the time.
Kind of a tangent, but while the png format uses lossless compression, you do not know that the .png you have in front of you is lossless from the filename; image softwares can and do support preprocessing an image with lossy algorithms to improve the file size.
This is sort of unlike flac for audio – it is technically also possible, but hardly anyone would do it, since the only reason to use flac is for lossless compression.
I get the impression that .png is used alongside .jpg as a general image format, although i don’t really know.
You also don’t know if your .png file has an alpha channel or not – might have been made without one.
How to determine if webp is lossless? Old format easy, jpg vs. png.
As an expert in image processing:
.png supports pretty extreme compression, while a jpeg can also be lossless. The extensions tell you nothing except which family of algorithms was used to encode/compress/store them.
Webp though, webp is only used for the internet. I mean, you could use it other places, I guess.
You’re an “expert in image processing” but don’t understand the fundamental difference between the .jpg and .png image formats or the encoding and compression algorithms underpinning them? I find that doubtful.
.png only compresses efficiently when used as intended, which is for screenshots or other images with large areas of solid colors, where each pixel is most likely the same color value as its neighbors. In this use case, it’s much more efficient than .jpg. However, .jpg is much more efficient than .png when it’s used as it’s intended; encoding images of the real world, like images taken with a digital camera, where each pixel has a slightly different color value than the ones next to it.
You can test this yourself by taking a picture with your phone’s camera, then copying the image, converting the copy to the other file format, then comparing the file sizes. Next, repeat the process with a screenshot of a web page or a simple Paint drawing. You’ll see that the camera image is smaller as a .jpg but the screenshot is smaller as a .png.
Is this a very niche copypasta that I’m unaware of?
Nothing the other guy said contradicts this? Nor shows a lack of understanding this?
Yeah they didn’t say anything about efficiency lol, where the hell did all that come from
png also compresses better when you lower the color depth, the number of colors. And you forgot png has alpha which is a big deal IMO.
Finally someone said it
It’s made by Google, that’s enough.
I thought Google usually has a good record with open formats.
There’s always an alterior motive with that company, you can count on it.
WebP has all the functionality of jpg, gif, and png with better compression ratios.
can’t store images larger than 16,383 x 16,383 pixels
I weep for the web server that has to serve those size images. I can typically cut webserver bandwidth in half by converting all non svg images to webp. Have had one project where this cut the network fee by 80% and allowed us to downgrade the rented server space.
that’s a lot, what format did it have before?
and how many images are above 16k x 16k pixels?
If you have an optimisation for 99% of all online images, then that’s dope - You can use more niche or older compressions for your very high pixel files
As someone who has edited videos and had to convert WebPs every time I accidentally downloaded them, no they do not.
There’s a difference between whether or not a file format supports features and a software supporting the file format. A tractor can have loads of features and still not be the right fit for you if it does fit in your barn. Doesn’t mean the tractor doesn’t have those features. DDR5 can be better then DDR4 and yet not all motherboards support it. It is trivial to convert from webp to the file format you need for your unique situation. Its supported baseline by browsers and use on the web is its best case. I make websites that allow people to customize SOLIDWORKS CAD files. SOLIDWORKS doesn’t support webp: I still use it on the website wherever possible and if someone uploads in webp I just convert to jpg before inserting into SOLIDWORKS.
Translation: your video editor sucks.
Have you ever edited a video or are you just talking out your ass? Really doesn’t matter, he said they had the same functionality, they do not. It had no problem at all with other image formats.
To be fair, if your video editor doesn’t support webp in 2026 it has to at least suck a little bit.
Yes, a few times. I have exactly 60 “.kdenlive” files in my “videos” dir. That editor itself sucks, but seems your does harder.
Can’t demo much as most of these are aimed at very niche communities (ranging from 1k people to 4 person groupchat with only 1 person who cares), and some are also a bit problematic in content. As you could have guessed, it’s meme stuff, so quite image heavy.
some examples that I am comfortable with sharing
license (please note that they are basically collages of de minimis and transformative content, sometimes needed for parody)
DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, December 2004 Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <[email protected]> Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is changed. DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.Now, what are you defining as “functionality”?
Speaking of talking out your ass, you seem unable to differentiate between the responsibility of a file format, and the responsibility of the file reader.
webp will always be funny to me because it was made exclusively by Google to reduce lossy file size for faster HTTP transfer, but then when JPEGXL was released with better lossy compression and the ability to load graphical data progressively by quality instead of line by line bitstream, Google switched to AVIF instead and doubled down on even more lossy compression because they just want to save cloud costs and don’t care about image quality.
… What was ever wrong about webp? As far as I know it gives slightly better compression than jpg at similar quality
The biggest issue AFAIK has been that certain OS vendors didn’t allow their users to enjoy it while the internet went on to use a new tool, so they got a lot of broken images
That is your vendors fault, not webp
The person who belongs in extra hell is whoever decided not to implement support for heic natively in Windows.
Licensing bullshit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8ptbss/comment/e0dv1d4/?context=3
https://www.zdnet.com/article/if-vlc-can-ship-a-free-dvd-player-why-cant-microsoft/
Explains it well.
Tldr: VLC is in France and doesn’t have to respect copyright laws over software while Microsoft does and has to pay money for codecs per install.
Actually I would say the the one who goes to extra health should be whoever at Apple made the decision to use the patent encumbered HEIC format as the default for iPhone photos.
There are plenty of open picture formats that do the same thing without a patent tax.
Oddly enough, microsoft decided that. They are also apart of the group that owns the license to it, which includes apple and sony.
You use shitty app it is not fault of format
Skill issue
