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Bringing up an old topic ...
What's the status with "WebP Export" implementation? I had in mind it was planned for 1.9.xxx? ... are there any news on this topic or decisions made? Still kind of desperately looking for the export option.
Cheers, Timo

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In general, Serif no longer comment on possible new features and when they will be implemented – if at all – for various understandable reasons.
If you want to know if something new is coming to the commercial releases you can subscribe to one of the relevant Beta forum threads to keep up-to-date with what’s happening.

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36 minutes ago, DarkClown said:

Could a Moderator please shift this  topic to the beta fortums?
Cheers, Timo

The beta forums are about the current beta apps, with one for each app in the two or three operating systems. I think that your problem is best kept in this forum.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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2 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

The beta forums are about the current beta apps, with one for each app in the two or three operating systems. I think that your problem is best kept in this forum.

John

Thx, John, I'm aware of that since I'm participating in the Beta for many years now ;-)
"Problem" is that WebP was (if I remember correctly) earlier announced as part of the 1.9 (Beta) but still is only available as import but no sign of export. If serif refuses to make any comments on future product enhancements the question might be better suited for the beta Forums. I just thought this might interest other useres as well that don't have acces to the beta forums.

Cheers, Timo

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 i7-12700KF, 3.60 GHz, 32GB RAM, SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet, Windows 11 Pro - AP, AD and APublisher V1 and V2
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I saw someone mention the WebPShop Photoshop plug-in the other day as a means of exporting to the WebP format. I downloaded the macOS version and installed it in my Affinity Photo plug-ins folder hoping that it might work within Affinity Photo. I had no luck with it myself (wasn't visible within the plug-ins panel) and was wondering if anybody had managed to get it working?

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It's slightly different ... there are filter plugins and export plugins in Photoshop. Affinity only supports filter plugins but the WebP plugin is an export plugin ...
It's a bit of a trade-of. Implementing an additional filter structure is presumably not simple (but offers the whole range of PS export plugins - if done properly). The alternative is the implementation of an additional proprietary export filter. What kind of irritates me is that neither seems to be taken into consideration by Affinity. That's why I asked for the direction Affinity is going ... From my personal point of view a proper WebP export would make my life a lot easier and it would be high up in the list of desireable features.

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 i7-12700KF, 3.60 GHz, 32GB RAM, SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet, Windows 11 Pro - AP, AD and APublisher V1 and V2
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  • 3 weeks later...

If you're at all comfortable with the command line, ImageMagick will convert JPG or PNG to webP nearly instantly and has oodles of parameters to allow you to adjust it to taste. You can convert dozens of files in seconds. Even if you have to brush up on the command line, it'd be faster than hoping Serif makes this a priority if it really isn't, in their eyes.

ImageMagick is free. Works on Windows, Mac, Linux. The command to convert a file is

convert 1.jpg -quality 50 -define webp:lossless=false 1.webp

and now you have a webP that's indistinguishable from the JPG but about 40% the size.

Unless one is truly uncomfortable with working at the command line, having a free, fast, reliable tool seems a viable alternative. (And, if you want command line help, ask me. Glad to share what I know in a manner that makes sense to even normal humans.)

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Now that we have an excellent export preview it would make total sense with webp as an actual export option in Photo. Photo can even be one of the first tools to offer a great user experience and UI for webp export.

Sometimes you can make do with bulk - in my case I have editors dragging the quality slider manually while inspecting photos during export. The lack of elegant user interface for the average person kept me us from adapting webp for now.

It is great to have such options - but they are rarely used by staff outside it-departments.

The problem with bulk is the one quality parameter used for all files.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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51 minutes ago, All Media Lab said:

sebp I never optimize in https://www.xnview.com/en/xnconvert/ and still have a small file size and for jpg I use: https://www.jpegmini.com/ you can drag and drop a folder with  500 images that are optimized in sec.

Our scenario:

  • Source: Original TIFF files from professional photographers
  • We simply always generate output files from the source for maximum quality and smooth colour transitions (if possible)
  • Edit and crop in ... Adobe Photoshop
  • Save while adjusting compression ratio using 100% preview and manual inspection

We are dealing with medium sized images (real photos of real people) for article headers. Smallest size possible is crucial as we now have 60 mio. unique visitors every year. Server and bandwidth usage matters big time. But the visual quality must be superb. No artifacts. Servers of course use smaller versions when the visitor use a smartphone or a tablet.

Non-photos are all SVG's. So the SVG code must be perfect as well. Our developers inspect each and every SVG. 

So we never batch convert and re-compress anything. Wouldn't recommend it either. But in some cases it can make sense, of course.

No WebP output and no optimized svg... no go. In our case.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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  • 2 months later...

Have a look at the replies from some of the Serif staff in this thread from 2019: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/85857-affinity-not-for-webdesign-no-webp-still/
As I read it, they don’t seem to have a problem with WebP, as such.
They seem to be waiting until there is more actual evidence that it is widely used, is supported by the major players, and will remain to be so before they think any more about doing something with it, which seems quite fair considering everything else they have got to deal with.
I don’t see much need for further discussion on this. Serif are well aware of what’s happening in the graphics field (most probably much more so than many users) and if they decide not to add WebP functionality then that’’s entirely their decision as it’s their software and they can do with it as they please.
This page https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/image_format may give you some idea of why they might not be doing much with it.

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https://caniuse.com/webp

https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/im-webp#:~:text=WebP is used by 1.4% of all the websites.

How many websites are there?

It's the chicken and egg question, as long as nobody besides all current browsers support webp it will never be widely used by web designers/developers. If Serif gave it a change by supporting it that would help a lot promoting it. At the same time if AVIF/JPEG XL is become common ground in the future  Affinity will be to late with introducing webp.

We use webp with jpg fallback in every website we make!

It's a missed opportunity! 

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2 hours ago, GarryP said:

This page https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/image_format may give you some idea of why they might not be doing much with it.

Check the disclaimer of how that page gathers its data.

It doesn't check every page of the site and doesn't deal with dynamic content resulting from searches and the like.

 

21 minutes ago, All Media Lab said:

We use webp with jpg fallback in every website we make!

This could also be a good hint.  If the site is using headers from the browser to determine which type of image to send, then depending on the headers being used by the page gathering the statistics, it may be that a given web server doesn't recognize the fact that WebP is "supported" and it may be resorting to the fallback, skewing the statistics.

 

In short, the statistics from that site are nearly useless.  If Serif is basing their decisions on something like that then they may not be getting a true picture of what is going on.

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13 minutes ago, All Media Lab said:

fde101

If it's "only" 1.4% from the  1,197,982,359 websites that seem to be online at the moment it's still a lot!

That's true, but my point is that the actual percentage using the format may be much higher.

The images could be on pages that the survey being performed by that site can't reach, or the survey may not be accounting for some reason that the sites could be falling back on a different format due to not recognizing that the survey could handle WebP.

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3 minutes ago, fde101 said:

That's true, but my point is that the actual percentage using the format may be much higher.

Yes of course! I agree!😉 But looking only at the so called "official figures" gives already  a enormous amount of webp users. Imagine that your calculation is included even more!

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  • 2 weeks later...

New Designer/Photo customer here. Just want to add my support for native/plug-in WebP export in Designer and Photo. Using a third-party service is cumbersome and not always reliable (requires working Internet connection after all).

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  • 1 month later...
On 2/14/2021 at 8:17 AM, spinhead said:

If you're at all comfortable with the command line, ImageMagick will convert JPG or PNG to webP nearly instantly and has oodles of parameters to allow you to adjust it to taste. You can convert dozens of files in seconds. Even if you have to brush up on the command line, it'd be faster than hoping Serif makes this a priority if it really isn't, in their eyes.

ImageMagick is free. Works on Windows, Mac, Linux. The command to convert a file is


convert 1.jpg -quality 50 -define webp:lossless=false 1.webp

and now you have a webP that's indistinguishable from the JPG but about 40% the size.

Unless one is truly uncomfortable with working at the command line, having a free, fast, reliable tool seems a viable alternative. (And, if you want command line help, ask me. Glad to share what I know in a manner that makes sense to even normal humans.)

Thanks, ImageMagick helped me to shrink a 327kb PNG-picture, exported from Affinity Photo, to a 31.4kb webP-picture, quite a big difference and I don't get why this isn't implemented in Affinity Photo yet.

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1 hour ago, NordishBen said:

I don't get why this isn't implemented in Affinity Photo yet.

You're most welcome, and it probably isn't implemented because it's not as easy as we might think and/or it's not as important as other things that need implementing.

Project management and digital product creation is at least eleven times as complex as most people realize. In my previous life as a guy who did stuff, I was sometimes asked "Why haven't you done this yet?" and the only answer was "Because I was doing 3 other things you asked me to do." One employer literally said "If you work faster you can get more done in the same amount of time."

I've reached the age where patience comes a little easier, mostly as a way to accept what is rather than fussing about what I wish it was.

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