WebP is an image format from Google for lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. WebP images are smaller in size compared to JPEG (see comparision below) and PNG images, and it has support for transparency (a.k.a. as alpha channel), animation, ICC color profile, XMP meta-data and tiling.
| JPEG | WEBP |
|---|---|
 JPEG image. Res.: 500x333, Size: 80.4KB |
 WebP image. Res.: 500x333, Size: 31.9KB |
If you can’t see WebP image, click here.
WebP image format is not natively supported by Windows, various graphic editors and even browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer. Because of this, they are not widely used yet. But if you found yourself with a .webp image, here are some ways to view and edit them on Windows.
View WebP Images in Windows
To view WebP images natively on Windows, you can download and install the WebP codec. This codec brings WebP support to software such as Windows Photo Viewer, Microsoft Office 2010 (You can share documents with WebP images with your friends or colleagues and they would be able to view it without installing the WebP codec.) and Windows Media Center. It also enables thumbnail support for the image format in Windows Explorer.
WebP codec works on Windows XP Service Pack 3 and newer.
Download: WebP codec
Google Chrome (v9+) and Opera (v11.10+) browser natively support WebP. You can extend support to Internet Explorer with Google Chrome Frame.So if you simply want to view images, you can use these programs as well.
Create and Edit WebP Images in Windows
Graphic software XnConvert, ImageMagick and Konvertor has native support for WebP. If you have any of these installed, you can view, edit and create images easily.
If you use a professional software like Photoshop, you can add support for WebP by installing a free plug-in by Telegraphics. The plugin is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Photoshop CS5 and earlier. GIMP also has a plugin for WebP.
Download:
- WebP Photoshop Plugin
- WebP GIMP Plugin
Convert JPEG and PNG images to WebP Image Format
Google has made available two command line utilities, cwebp and dwebp, to convert JPEG and PNG images to WebP and vice versa.
To convert images to the WebP format use cwebp. On the command line enter:
cwebp -quality 85 image.png -o image.webp
To convert WebP images to PNG or any other format use dwebp. On the command line enter:
dwebp image.webp -o image.png
Complete instruction is available in the download package.
Download WebP library and tools: 32-bit | 64-bit
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