WebP Image Format – Google WebP Image Format Converter and Editors

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Google webp image format is an image format from Google for lossy compressed image files to make web faster by reducing the image file sizes and download times.
Weppy format (WebP is pronounced as “Weppy”) is knows as Google’s open source JPEG killer and uses a compression algorithm that is based on the intra-frame coding of the VP8 video format.
WebP is based on block prediction. Each block is predicted on the values from three blocks above it and from one block left to it.
A .WEBP file is designed to improve the performance of web pages and make the web faster by reducing image file sizes and thereby reducing the download time.


According to Google, the WebP images were 39.8% smaller than jpeg images of similar quality. Since the format is lossy repeated editing of a .WEBP file may reduce the overall quality of the image.

Browser Support for WebP Image Format

As of now two major web browsers support WebP image format. Google Chrome version 9 and above and Opera 11.10 beta. There is a free WebP file format plugin available for for Adobe Photoshop.

Tool Plugins (Adobe Photoshop) for WebP Image Format

You can download the Adobe Photoshop WebP File Format plugin that allows you to opens and saves 24-bit WebP images.  This plugin is available for both Mac and Windows OS.

Convert JPEG and PNG images to WebP Image Format and View Them

Also you can convert your collection of PNG and JPEG images to WebP format.  Download and use the precompiled libraries form Google.  You can use “cwebp” on the command line to convert PNG or JPEG image files to WebP format. For example to convert a .png image to .webp using the cwebp utility is given below.

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cwebp -quality 80 image.png -o image.webp

This will convert image.png to image.webp with a quality range of 80. You can convert WebP images to PNG format using dwebp on the command line. See below example

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dwebp image.webp -o image.png

Read more about how to start converting your images is also mentioned here.
You can also install the WebP Codec for Windows to view WebP files in Windows Photo Viewer and their thumbnails in Windows Explorer.