New export file formats (JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP)

[Helmar]

Title says it all. Google PageSpeed is recommending the use of these formats, but AP doesn't support any of them. Please, if possible, do.

[raguay]

I'll upvote this for Affinity Photo and Designer. Especially since Photoshop and Illustrator don't support it natively and the extension for it is very flacky. This is a chance to out shine them!

[chrisbst]

All the above formats have been around for many years and there are lots of reasong why companies like Adobe do not generally support them so dont get caught up in google hype

 

[NBG]

On 3/7/2019 at 12:30 PM, chrisbst said:

All the above formats have been around for many years and there are lots of reasong why companies like Adobe do not generally support them so dont get caught up in google hype

 

It's no "hype"! It makes my website much faster saving 25-50% of original jpg size.

[Fixx]

Safari does not support JPEG XR or WebP. You should use supported file formats.

[NBG]

15 minutes ago, Fixx said:

Safari does not support JPEG XR or WebP. You should use supported file formats.

No. We wanna use it NOW! For browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) WHO support it.

We don't want to way until Apple wakes up and don't BLOCKS WebP anymore...

[Andy Somerfield]

JPEG-XR is on the shortish-term todo list - mainly because it does a good job of half float HDR stuff.

JPEG2000 is dead (it was never really alive) and I'm waiting to see if anyone ends up caring about WEBP..

Thanks,

A

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, Andy Somerfield said:

I'm waiting to see if anyone ends up caring about WEBP

I’m sure there are many users who would like to see WebP support, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’re outnumbered by those who want support for 1-bit BMP or transparent TGA export.

[Medical Officer Bones]

Love WebP and PNG for game development. I use WebP mainly for lossy images which also require alpha transparency to vastly reduce the file size footprint.

And in my opinion not supporting WebP is a bit silly. High traffic websites are converting more and more to the use of WebP instead of jpg, for the simple reason of reducing traffic bandwidth. WebP is out there, it is used, and it ought to be supported by an image editor.

[Burndog]

WebP is google backed and initially developed I believe. Google controls what we all do on the web if we are concerned about getting our websites seen.

Please add this export module to Designer and Photo as it is essential to anyone that is competitive in the Google SERP ranking environment (which should be anyone with a website).

[popster]

As I am new to AP, I'm still working my way through its functions and capabilities. When I saw that it (AP) does not have the ability to export to WebP, I performed a Google search looking for the reason. After reading a couple of threads on this forum I see a lot of passion for adding the capability, but that passion is being met with a lot of indifference and misinformation in some of the responses.

For example, from the Affinity Photo Lead: and I'm waiting to see if anyone ends up caring about WEBP..

I must say that statement does not exemplify an understanding of web page design and construction.  Allow me to put this subject in perspective for you. 

1. WebP offers approximately 25-34% smaller file sizes in comparison to JPEG. (https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webp_study)

2. Given that images account for 51% of the content (in total page size) on a typical web page (https://www.keycdn.com/blog/image-cdn), a reduction of that magnitude is a significant factor both on a micro and macro scale.

3. It is a fact that ~90% of all searches are performed through Google (https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-share-of-search-engines/). Therefore, the necessity of appearing on the front page of an organic Google search is critical to the huge majority of websites.

4. Page speed scores are a vital component of SEO. The better the SEO score, the higher a website appears in SER. It then follows that a page with a smaller footprint will otherwise load more quickly and the faster a page will load the higher it will rank. (https://gtmetrix.com/)  (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/)

5. Google decrees the SEO rules and guidelines. I don't necessarily agree with or even like how they've dictated policy, but they have the market share and we have to live with it. So, if they write the rules and build the hoops, one either jumps through those hoops or is left in a detrimental position.

6. The argument that Apple Safari doesn't support WebP, therefore it (WebP) must not be very popular or some fringe property is weak at best. Chrome currently has 60+% market share and Safari ~15%. Although the other browsers have small numbers, they support WebP which results in only a ~15% share of browser traffic that doesn't. A good designer/developer will include both formats as options when constructing a page, but it would be nice if Apple stopped their snobbery and went with the most efficient solution. (https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share)

7. Why the reluctance to change? Old formats, codecs, standards have come and gone. Some hang around because nothing better has been developed (TIFF, maybe). Others are not let go simply because it's what we're comfortable using. There are undoubtedly various other reasons for why adoption is sometimes slow; however, from a technical point of view, there is substantial evidence that WebP is superior to both JPEG and PNG (just do a Google search) for both the web and printing. In my opinion, it's time to move on.

[Old Bruce]

Sorry to be a bit snarky here ... my 2¢ (from an old man shaking his fist at the clouds).

1 hour ago, popster said:

(just do a Google search)

about a Google product.

Use our stuff or be left out of all the search results.

I just do not trust Google, they are not our friends.

[popster]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Sorry to be a bit snarky here ... my 2¢ (from an old man shaking his fist at the clouds).

about a Google product.

Use our stuff or be left out of all the search results.

I just do not trust Google, they are not our friends.

I do not necessarily disagree (says another old man), but I build sites for clients who expect results. WebP is a simply a tool that gets the job done a little better than some other tools.

[Helmar]

19 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Sorry to be a bit snarky here ... my 2¢ (from an old man shaking his fist at the clouds).

about a Google product.

Use our stuff or be left out of all the search results.

I just do not trust Google, they are not our friends.

Bruce, this is totally OT here, but I just wanted to give you the chance to post your 3000th post here on this forum. :-)

At the same time I would love to see new file formats added to the Affinity Range, and yes, even though Google is not our friend and does do evil, as long as the majority uses it in one or another way, it's the piper to whose tune we play.

[Old Bruce]

Just now, Helmar said:

Bruce, this is totally OT here, but I just wanted to give you the chance to post your 3000th post here on this forum. :-)

At the same time I would love to see new file formats added to the Affinity Range, and yes, even though Google is not our friend and does do evil, as long as the majority uses it in one or another way, it's the piper to whose tune we play.

Thanks, I must be more long winded and verbose than I think I am. [smiley-face emoticon]

Play or Pay the piper?

[Helmar]

Just now, Old Bruce said:

Thanks, I must be more long winded and verbose than I think I am. [smiley-face emoticon]

Play or Pay the piper?

You did it! Congratulations! 

Regarding Google, it's a trade(-off). We get stuff for free while they have to pay for what they are offering us, so they (have to) get it back by some other means. 

As an aside, I read an interesting product rating at Pixelmator (Apple App Store).  A German user said that Affinity Photo has been "treading water" for the past years, and that Pixelmator offers much more innovation (including support of Color Fonts). That's why he went for and recommended Pixelmator over Affinity Photo. This may tie in nicely with the issue we're having here regarding supported file formats.

[Burndog]

It seems that there is little viable argument to ignore webP if Google places favoratism on it in regards to our client's end products. Additionally,  the end product/image quality from webP is really good. So regardless of if you like Google or not, webP is an opportunity for Affinity to stay current with its user's requirements (at least those needing to display their images on web browsers and provide SEO for their clients).

[fde101]

On 6/23/2019 at 1:10 PM, Andy Somerfield said:

if anyone ends up caring about WEBP..

Yes, people care about WebP.  Not familiar enough with JPEG XR to comment, but while there are existing JPEG 2000 images out there and import support would be nice, I do agree that export support for JPEG 2000 is something most people could easily live without.  For everyone else, there is always GraphicConverter...  and ImageMagick.

[Burndog]

JPEG XR seems useless unless you're on a Microsoft box:
https://caniuse.com/#feat=jpegxr

 

And JPEG 2000 is a Safari only resource:
https://caniuse.com/#search=JPEG 2000

 

Dump both these and add webP would be a better and wiser choice IMHO

[fde101]

17 hours ago, Burndog said:

JPEG XR seems useless unless you're on a Microsoft box:

You seem to be making the assumption that the entire world revolves around the web...

That said I just checked and this format does appear to be supported only by M$ browsers, one video game (using it for its textures), and a handful of photo editors/viewers.

It has been around for at least a decade and does not seem to have caught on, so I think too this one could be sidelined for the time being.

I also came across an article indicating that someone tested this and determined that using JPEG XR slowed down page rendering in the M$ browsers more than the reduced size reduced the download time, so their recommendation was to never use it there either.

[Burndog]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

You seem to be making the assumption that the entire world revolves around the web...

True, but in the context of this discussion we are talking about "Google Pagespeed" which is related to the web.
 

Does the Affinity development team ever weigh in on these discussions? It would be of interest what the difficulties are in implementing webP either natively or as a plugin. For instance, is the format propietary? Is there a licensing fee from Google or?

[walt.farrell]

3 minutes ago, Burndog said:

Does the Affinity development team ever weigh in on these discussions?

It's very rare for Serif to participate in discussions in the Feature Requests forum.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Burndog said:

in the context of this discussion we are talking about "Google Pagespeed"

But in doing so you are discussing functionality that transcends that use case.  Import/export is needed for more than just the web, so while it may have been brought up with that focus in mind, the developers will need to consider other use cases when evaluating changes to functionality that impacts everyone.

[popster]

As far as I'm aware, there are no licensing fees for WebP's use. It's an open source project and Google has provided the API's. Also, I don't think implementing WebP would involve a major update to AP. The current Photoshop plugin is available for free on Github. It doesn't work in AP (or at least I've not been able to make it work), but maybe it wouldn't be a very difficult rewrite for someone who knows their stuff.

And I would be remiss if I failed to mention that there are a few places one can have a jpg/png/gif/ ---> WebP conversion made. It's not the end of the world if Serif chooses not to officially add the capability, but it would save time. 

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Burndog said:

It would be of interest what the difficulties are in implementing webP either natively or as a plugin. For instance, is the format propietary? Is there a licensing fee from Google or?

Implementation specifics do depend on own custom implementations versus the Google reference implementation. Further how a specific software reads/writes out it's data streams, meaning here, it might be easier or more work to adapt a specific other third party file format into the own software pooling depending on the own underlayed architecture structure.

I think the format is actually still proprietary, since AFAIK it's not already common standardized. - The webp code license is probably Apache 2.0 licensed, see here on the page bottoms:

• A new image format for the Web
• Webp FAQ