How to View WebP Images on Ubuntu and Linux Mint

If you’re familiar with Photoshop, the easiest way to get a taste for WebP is to try out the WebP Photoshop Plugin. After you install it, you’ll be able to use the Save As option (not Save For Web!) and select either WebP or WebP Lossless from the format dropdown. One solution is to right-click the WEBP image on a web page and choose “Open image in new tab,” then take a screenshot of it.

If there are not many unique pixel values, it may be more efficient to create
a color index array and replace the pixel values by the array’s indices. The color indexing transform checks
for the number of unique ARGB values in the image. If that number is below a
threshold (256), it creates an array of those ARGB values, which is then used
to replace the pixel values with the corresponding index. The “subtract green transform” subtracts the green values from the red and
blue values of each pixel. When this transform is present, the decoder needs
to add the green value to both red and blue. This is a special case of the
general color decorrelation transform above, frequent enough to warrant a
cutoff.

How to convert WEBP to JPEG or PNG using an online converter

This is likely to put too much pressure on the CPU and memory of the
decoding client as each refresh event involves a full pass through the
decompression system. Considering the great effect on loading times, virtually any site or social media can benefit from WebP format. There’s plenty to choose from, and in fact most succeed at the basic task of converting a file to WebP. If the icon can be represented using vector graphics, consider SVG, since it scales across various resolutions and sizes, so it’s perfect for responsive design. Although SVG support is good, it may be worth offering a PNG fallback for older browsers.

Depending on the size of the file, the conversion should only take a few seconds. After the conversion, you’ll be redirected to the download page, then click the “Download” button to start the download. Next, click “Choose Format, and from the drop-down menu, choose a supported format to convert into. After the tool converts and saves the image, you can navigate to the output file’s location, and open it with any program you want.

Enable Support for WebP on the Default Image Viewer

You can save a WebP image to your computer the same way you would any other image on the internet; right-click the image and click “Save Image As.” As part of this guide, we’ll demonstrate how to convert WebP to JPG and WebP to PNG using the Online Converter web tool. As we mentioned initially, there are three different ways to view WebP images on Linux. While most people would be fine with this, the lack of viewing and editing options can be limiting for some. Fortunately, though, there are workarounds to view WebP images on a computer. File size is reduced to 149 kb approximately, which almost 14% of the original image.

WebP image format

GIF was one of the first two graphics formats supported by HTML, along with XBM. APNG is a file format first introduced by Mozilla which extends the PNG standard to add support for animated images. Lossless WebP supports transparency (also known as alpha channel) at a
cost of just 22% additional bytes. For cases when lossy RGB compression
is acceptable, lossy WebP also supports transparency, typically providing
3× smaller file sizes compared to PNG. If you want to view this file format on most non-Apple devices, you’re going to need to convert your images first.

Download WebP Images in Another Format

With 60%-65% of bytes on most web pages being images, Google set out to create a free, open-source file format that stores both lossy and lossless compression formats in high-quality. While maintaining quality but reducing the size of images, pages load faster, use less bandwidth, and save battery power—especially on mobile—when pages use WebP images. On the other hand, the PNG file type is excellent for retaining high image quality due to its lossless compression. This format suits images that have a lot of pixels, like text-heavy infographics. It also supports transparency, which makes it ideal for web design elements and logos.

WebP image format

Where demo.jpeg is the image before conversion, demo.webp is the image after conversion. WebP uses VP8 video codec which is used to compress keyframes in videos. This document discuses webP, a new image format which can reduce the image size up to 28% and 35% respectively when compared to a PNG and JPEG image. If you’re having trouble viewing a WebP image on your device, use one of the methods above to convert your image to a compatible format. If your iPhone or iPad runs iOS 13 or later or iPadOS, you don’t need to do anything to convert WebP images. Instead, all your downloaded WebP images automatically convert to JPEG by default.

What is the maximum size a WebP image can be?

A WebP file contains either a still image (that is, an encoded matrix of pixels)
or an animation. Optionally, it can also contain transparency
information, a color profile and metadata. According to Google’s own data, WebP lossless compression is 26% smaller than PNGs and its lossy compression is 25-34% smaller than JPEGs. For sites that use a https://wizardsdev.com/en/news/webp-or-png-to-choose/ lot of images, switching over could make a significant impact and shave valuable milliseconds of loading time, especially on mobile. Most default image viewers on Ubuntu and its derivatives including Eye of GNOME and Xviewer support WebP images natively. However, to open or view these images, you need to add support for WebP to the program.

  • The length and distance values are stored using LZ77 prefix
    coding.
  • WebP images are designed for the web and are almost indistinguishable from JPEG and PNG, so you may not have even noticed that’s what you were looking at.
  • The process begins with creating a canvas using the dimensions given in the
    ‘VP8X’ Chunk, Canvas Width Minus One + 1 pixels wide by Canvas Height Minus
    One + 1 pixels high.
  • If you use ICO files, you should use the BMP format, as support for PNG inside ICO files wasn’t added until Windows Vista and may not be well supported.
  • A WebP file MUST begin with a RIFF header with the FourCC ‘WEBP’.
  • While the standard HTML element doesn’t support compatibility fallbacks for images, the element does.
  • The Loop Count field from the ‘ANIM’ Chunk controls how
    many times the animation process is repeated.

Also, WebPShop is available on GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license. To open a WebP file, select and open it in the same way you’d open any other supported file or document. In addition to open capabilities, you can now create, edit, and save WebP files. In the above example, the visual differences are nearly imperceptible, yet the differences in file size are substantial.

Unknown Chunks

Finally, to view a WebP image, double-click on the image, and it will open it in the gThumb Image Viewer.

WebP image format

You can use the WebP command line utility to convert your personal image files
to WebP format. HTML5 supports a element, which allows you to list multiple,
alternative image targets in priority order, such that a client will request
the first candidate image that it can display properly. Of course, you can always go with an even simpler option if you just want to convert a handful of images. Ezgif is a free online WebP converter, the operative words being free and online. You won’t find the more advanced features of XnConvert, but if your concerns are speed and convenience, it has you covered. While the standard HTML element doesn’t support compatibility fallbacks for images, the element does.

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