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Too bad alpha channel support is not part of the WebP spec yet (although it's promised). That would have the potential to truly make it a JPEG killer. Currentl

Too bad alpha channel support is not part of the WebP spec yet (although it's promised). That would have the potential to truly make it a JPEG killer. Currently, PNG24 is the only (browser supported) image format that supports transparency, but the files can be huge. The only advantage over JPEG currently is that the files are somewhat smaller for the same quality. Yes, that's nice, but not enough to displace an heavily ingrained format with 20 years of use.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
It seems relevant that Opera is deploying it in order to support their "Turbo" mode, where smaller files is a much stronger positive, and interoperability means very little. Interestingly, when Google first announced WebP, they used benchmarks to demonstrate its worth that suited the "Turbo" case perfectly. Everyone was confused why you'd test a format by re-compressing already lossy files. I'm assuming the other shoe will drop at some point and Google will start to transparently replace transient image files served by their services (e.g. Image Search or Picasas thumbnails, maybe even map tiles) as long as your browser supports WebP. Like Opera Turbo, mobile uses probably need this more than desktop in most of the world. And of course they already ship the code for WebM, which probably helps somewhat. The two formats may very slightly re-inforce each other's use.
underwater 16y ago
8 bit PNG supports alpha transparency. It's just Adobe have chosen not to implement it in Photoshop. See here http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-clear-winner/ http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-clear-winner/.
- wladimir 16y ago
  But that's hardly in the same league. The only use-case for PNG8 is small icons. For everything else, 8-bit paletted formats lead to banding and dithering like it's 1995.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Most of the large diagrams I make use fewer than 2^8 colors, but then I tend to use solid-color stuff rather than gradients. Granted, SVG is even better for those, but if they need to be rasterized (as they often do), PNG8 works fine.
    - wladimir 16y ago
      I like to use slight gradients and/or antialiased text. Both use up palette entries like crazy. Good point about SVG(.gz), I forgot about it. SVG it can do transparency as well, and is extremely compact, at least for diagrams. And even better, it allows to add interactivity to your diagrams. WEBP would be as unsuited as JPEG for diagrams, as your high frequency drawing will be turned into a blurry mess. However, for things like layer effects and backgrounds, it'd still be nice to have a lossy raster format that supports partial transparency.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

It seems relevant that Opera is deploying it in order to support their "Turbo" mode, where smaller files is a much stronger positive, and interoperability means very little. Interestingly, when Google first announced WebP, they used benchmarks to demonstrate its worth that suited the "Turbo" case perfectly. Everyone was confused why you'd test a format by re-compressing already lossy files. I'm assuming the other shoe will drop at some point and Google will start to transparently replace transient image files served by their services (e.g. Image Search or Picasas thumbnails, maybe even map tiles) as long as your browser supports WebP. Like Opera Turbo, mobile uses probably need this more than desktop in most of the world. And of course they already ship the code for WebM, which probably helps somewhat. The two formats may very slightly re-inforce each other's use.

underwater 16y ago

8 bit PNG supports alpha transparency. It's just Adobe have chosen not to implement it in Photoshop. See here http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-clear-winner/ http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-clear-winner/.

wladimir 16y ago
But that's hardly in the same league. The only use-case for PNG8 is small icons. For everything else, 8-bit paletted formats lead to banding and dithering like it's 1995.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Most of the large diagrams I make use fewer than 2^8 colors, but then I tend to use solid-color stuff rather than gradients. Granted, SVG is even better for those, but if they need to be rasterized (as they often do), PNG8 works fine.
  - wladimir 16y ago
    I like to use slight gradients and/or antialiased text. Both use up palette entries like crazy. Good point about SVG(.gz), I forgot about it. SVG it can do transparency as well, and is extremely compact, at least for diagrams. And even better, it allows to add interactivity to your diagrams. WEBP would be as unsuited as JPEG for diagrams, as your high frequency drawing will be turned into a blurry mess. However, for things like layer effects and backgrounds, it'd still be nice to have a lossy raster format that supports partial transparency.