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Google Releases New Image Format Called WebP
An anonymous reader writes "Google has released WebP, a lossy image format based on the image encoding used by VP8 (the video codec used in Google's WebM video format) to compress keyframes. According to the FAQ, WebP achieves an average 39% more compression than JPEG and JPEG 2000 while maintaining image quality. A gallery on the WebP homepage has a selection of images which compare the original JPEG image with the WebP encoded image shown as a PNG. There's no information available yet on which browsers will support the WebP image format, but I imagine it will be all the browsers which currently have native WebM support — Firefox, Chrome, and Opera."
Independent analysis of WebP is available from a few different sources.
JPEG was cutting edge a couple of decades ago but it's not very hard to beat now. We still use it because everything supports it and it's good enough.
I disagree. Look at images #3 and #4. The WebP versions are clearly sharper and more detailed than their JPEG counterparts. Other than that, the rest of the images are so close it's difficult to tell which is better. For a 39% size reduction, I think WebP has a clear advantage over JPEG. Some questions remaining are a) will companies actually adopt WebP and popularize it, or will it die a quiet death, and b) how CPU and memory-intensive is the algorithm to implement compared to JPEG, especially in mobile devices with limited resources and CPU power?
Most of the formats in general use are over a decade old, and the company says that they're consistently responsible for most of the latency users experience
BULL SHIT! Images are nothing anymore. Its poor javascript coding, flash ads and all the dependent site components that are responsible for most of the experienced latency now. Images don't mean squat unless you're still on a 28.8 modem.
Also, one way you can make jpeg images smaller is to set the quality value to 75 or 80, most people won't notice the difference and the size of your image will reduce dramatically. The problem today is that people leave their images at full quality right off their camera and upload a 2MB image file when it really only needs to be 138KB. WebP won't fix that user mistake.
The images from the x264 comparison are the most striking. In particular, compare the parasol. With the H.264 keyframe, you can see the spokes and the structure. With the JPEG version, there's some macroblocking, but the features are detectable. With the WebP one, it is just a red circle. The rest of the image is similar.
This is really a shame. Replacing JPEG is probably worthwhile - it's an ancient standard in computing terms. It comes from 1992, making it about the same age as the web. We have almost two decades of image encoding research to build on since then and, almost as importantly, computers are now much more powerful. The first web browser I used was on a 386, which was just about fast enough that the modem was the bottleneck when decoding JPEG images. Now, decoding even large JPEG images doesn't tax my CPU, so we have a lot more cycles to play with for efficient compression. Things like JPEG-2000 provide this, but because they're newer there is a potential for submarine patents to cause problems for them (as happened with GIF).
The problem with replacing JPEG is the install base. Every graphical web browser since Mosaic has been able to view JPEG images. None can see your new standard (without a plugin). No existing image editors or cameras can generate your new standard (without an external program). Remember how difficult it was for PNG adoption, and that was with the threat of patent lawsuits for encoders.
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I can visibly see a difference in ALL the pictures. The WebP version is slightly murkier and less shows less detail than the JPEG version.
More accurately, WebP doesn't invent any additional detail. Look at the second image. Lots of artifacts on the background around his head. The WebP version is sharper, has less artifacts, and is a whopping 75% smaller.
Clearly WebP is especially good at photos with large areas of the same colour, something that JPEG has always been incredibly bad at.
Memory is a concern, especially on embedded devices. Plus, many mobile devices have built-in hardware encoding/decoding support for JPEG to minimize CPU and memory usage.
PNG is a great format, but we don't need lossless for most pictures on the net.
Rather, rather than replacing everything with PNG, the web needs a lossy image format with alpha support and ability to do lossless when needed. Oddly enough, (currently) WebP does neither...
Sigs are for losers
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I'm very impressed with WebP overall. The images are sharper and have better colour tones, and obviously lack those awful JPEG colour smudges. The resolutions are unimportant - the important thing is that WebP produces the images at the same size at similar or superior quality. They are also significantly smaller.
I'd just like this opportunity to say "fuck the shitty Slashdot comments system". Try and guess which of the myriad reasons is causing me to complain this time!
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
They didn’t put WebP images in a PNG container. They compressed them as WebP, decompressed them, and then saved the raw pixels as PNG. PNG itself is a lossless format, so any differences you see between the JPEG and the PNG were introduced by the WebP compression. The PNG image is also on an order of 10x larger than the JPEG, which is why it takes longer to download/render on your computer...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It's a known fact* that electricity from hydro has a smoother, more natural sound than electricity from nuke plants. Coal is somewhere in the middle of the two.
I've heard people claim "Most people can't tell the difference between .01 and .05 THD, but I can." Which is like saying "Most people can't read the surgeon general's warning on a pack of cigarettes from a half mile away, but I can."
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*among wacky "audiophiles".
If you already know which is WebP and which is JPG, you're unavoidably biased. We're not going to settle this without a blind trial.
Slashdot hackers! Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to write a little website which encodes a series of raw never-been-compressed images as WebP and JPG of equal sizes, presents both side-by-side to the user, and has them click on the one they think is "better". Do not label which image is which: randomize them. Collect statistics and present the data on the site.
Any good php hacker should be able to whip this up in about an hour. I'd do it, but I've got work to do.