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

[Burndog]

5 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Er hello... your words:

 

Google from the perspective of SEO.

SEO is the biggest thing there is if your doing this professionally. If your just posting pics of your kitty to aunt jane and the rest of the family, then no big deal. But if your actually managing a website from the perspective of SEO (which means your in a competitive market related to eyes on a site), you have to play by Googles rules.
These rules include Mobile First, Content is King, and efficiency in delivery translates to better positioning in the SERPs.

[Medical Officer Bones]

@LondonSquirrel I feel you are missing the overall trend of webp usage and popularity.

I see a parallel trend with WebP compared to SVG. It took SVG a LONG while before it finally took off - but when it did... What I find most interesting is that it took SVG 4 years, more or less, to get where WebP arrived at in only 11 months time.

The 600% increase in this short time is quite telling, in my opinion. While it is still early days, I expect WebP usage to at least triple in the next 12-16 months.

We see that at this point that 8.2% of the top 10,000 sites use WebP for image delivery. Which makes sense: bandwidth costs money, and WebP saves bandwidth. But also because developers of the top segments tend to be more forward-thinking to remain competitive. Another reason why I forecast a dramatic increased uptake of WebP rather sooner than later. And very simply for smaller websites it means faster loading times and an improved user experience.

These things, and the increased awareness. In my classes more and more webp is used by the students. Most design software can now export WebP, even if it requires a plugin (looking at you, Adobe!).

The genie is out of the bottle. It is up to the Affinity devs to keep up with these developments and obvious trends. If not, they'll be left behind.

[Alfred]

47 minutes ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

We see that at this point that 8.2% of the top 10,000 sites use WebP for image delivery.

The corollary to that, of course, is that more than 90% of the top 10k sites don’t currently use it.

[Medical Officer Bones]

Instead of focusing on that static 3%, consider the trend: 600% increase in only 11 months. And before that almost no usage of WebP.

In any case - we will know in another 11 months

 

[JonBowen]

I've said it before, but for all these formats simply open your Serif PhotoPlus and your wishes are fulfilled.  And no, you can't export in Olympus Raw (.ORF): this is a plug-in and Ph+ lists all formats it knows about.

[Eric_WVGG]

What the heck is Serif PhotoPlus, and why would I want to install a separate editor for basic functionality?

Hell I could just convert images using ImageMagick from the terminal, the problem here isn't that we can't convert images somehow.

[JonBowen]

Serif PhotoPlus is the predecessor of Serif Affinity Photo and has many features which Serif has yet to include in Affinity Photo.  I have the Affinity suite, bought out of loyalty to (the) Serif of Nottingham, but find the old "Plus" products, which included a superb, and powerful video editor, quite adequate for the design, video, photo, and publishing work I do for a number of organizations.

[Eric_WVGG]

Cool. Regardless, my point stands: this is a mainstream image format today (as others have pointed out, Google, Facebook and Twitter drive somewhere close to half the web and use it), and that ratio will only grow. 

Photoshop doesn't support it? Is the point of Affinity Photo to be as good as Photoshop, or better?

I don't understand the arguments against supporting WebP at all. Is it the work involved? It's not a lot of work, open source libs for WebP are commonplace. Are they secretly hoping that WebP will fail in favor of superior, patent-free formats? I've been waiting twenty years for that, good luck.

[Burndog]

It's surprising how so many people that are clueless to the benefits of WebP have so much time to try to criticize it's benefits.

Simply put, WebP can format images that rival the quality of PNG but have the file size of a highly compressed JPG. That's it. There is no other argument.

If Serif was paying attention they would remove one of the other export options and add WebP.

[Eric_WVGG]

11 minutes ago, Burndog said:

Simply put, WebP can format images that rival the quality of PNG but have the file size of a highly compressed JPG. That's it. There is no other argument.

I don't even care about that. JPEG can't do alpha channels. WebP can. That makes JPEG a perpetual headache.

[Burndog]

37 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

There are plenty of other arguments. How do you open a webp file on the desktop, for one? Not in Photoshop without a plugin... Not in APhoto... Etc.

So two fingers to anyone using the other formats as long as you get the one that you want? Nice.

Sniff snifff... You really don't need to open WebP files after export. I understand many of the people don't understand much of the reasons behind how and why WebP is required for those of us that work on the Internet, with SEO, and how a parent/master file with multiple layers and then Exporting a flat file makes sense.

Who really uses TIFFs anymore when PSD is available? TGA? HDR probably has more merit for those in the 3D realm. EXR?

I wish someone from Serif would chime in as if they share the view that Designer and Photo where not created for people that also work on the web, I'll go back to Adobe as that is extremely short sighted.

[User_783649]

42 minutes ago, Burndog said:

how and why WebP is required for those of us that work on the Internet, with SEO

Should be automatically processed, converted, stored and served by web servers. There are various compress modules and configurations exist for Apache/Nginx as well as for many popular CMS. Not to mention that some well known CDNs are able to handle this for you.

Not sure someone actually needs this format somewhere other than web. So let it sit there.

[BeauRX]

I ran across the following WebP review shortly after reading this thread. A less than glowing review of WebP by a photographer and image processing engineer. It would seem that while shrinking images is extremely valuable to Google, it's less so for photographers especially given the quality concessions. 

https://eng.aurelienpierre.com/2021/10/webp-is-so-great-except-its-not/

[spleeding]

Look, lets be real about its purpose, which is found in the name: webp. We are talking about web pictures. It's not just valuable to Google, it's valuable to any web developer who desires to have fast-loading pages. They aren't meant to be the greatest image in the world. WordPress has added native support for webp, its use most-likely will go up. Yes, it is an unfamiliar format for most, yes, I can convert it on the CLI with cwepb, but it is an extra step. I can export to SVG in Affinity Photo, how many photographers use that?

When it comes to e-commerce and web traffic, fractions-of-a-second page-loading matter. A long time ago in this post I mentioned all of the newer competing formats that are trying to out-do each other. How many special formats have come and gone?

I don't think this thread was intended to be an argument over which format is the best. It was started (maybe by a web developer, @Helmar) who is looking at improving website performance and wants to save a step in conversion. Would you have this same back-and-forth between whether RAW or JPG is better? One or the other is better depending on the situation it is used.

For all of you who are anti-webp, keep in mind that there are currently 11 different export options of which I have not used half of them. I would guess that most of the commentors on this thread have not used half of them and there may be none to a handful that have used all of them.

This thread was supposed to let Affinity know that there are some of us who would like an option to export to a newer web format and ask them if they would consider, not for all of the people who don't have use for webp to tell those of us that do that we are fools, nor for those who want webp to tell those that don't that they are fools.

Which is better, a pickup truck or a sedan? Sedan gets better gas mileage, but good luck picking up a load of lumber.

[fde101]

On 12/22/2021 at 4:23 PM, Burndog said:

TGA

Mostly in video game development.

 

On 12/22/2021 at 4:23 PM, Burndog said:

HDR probably has more merit for those in the 3D realm.

When high definition TVs started rolling out, HD was the "cutting edge" and many video producers still continued to use standard definition cameras for quite some time.

Now that 4K is out in the open, "high" definition has become more of the standard and 4K is where HD was back then (and growing).  How many cameras still even offer to shoot in standard definition?  Some do, yes, and how many people actually use that capability?

I suspect something similar will happen with "high" dynamic range technologies: as they become more prevalent, the use of 8-bit technologies will gradually be marginalized in the market.  Still very relevant right now, but perhaps not particularly forward-thinking.  Eventually 8-bit may very well be limited in domain to the world of printing (as the added dynamic range is unlikely to be of benefit in the print world for some time yet), and WebP doesn't really have much relevance to that market.

 

On 12/22/2021 at 4:23 PM, Burndog said:

EXR?

EXR was engineered from day 1 to support the needs of high-end video compositors (visual FX houses) and it is heavily used in that arena.

[spleeding]

@LondonSquirrel

On 12/24/2021 at 12:56 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

Amazon don't seem to have a problem using JPGs, nor does YouTube.

Amazon and Google have billions of dollars to throw at massive servers, I don't think they are a fair example.

On 12/24/2021 at 12:56 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

But I do see a lot of very badly coded web sites, including humungous amounts of JavaScript libraries just to use a few functions - these same web developers might complain about loading speeds.

You're right, it isn't a silver bullet. You need to look at the whole package. You also can't overlook the obvious (webp loads faster than jpg because the files are smaller).

On 12/24/2021 at 12:56 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

Seriously, anyone who thinks that if a web page renders in 0.5 seconds compared to 0.55 seconds makes such a huge difference, good luck to you.

Maybe not for 1 person. If 100 people visit the same page at the same time, it will take an extra 5 seconds for the last guy to load. I realize that most sites don't get that much traffic, but if you can do more with less servers you can greatly increase your bottom line.

On 12/24/2021 at 12:56 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

Once again, I am in favour of more file types for APhoto to handle. But please don't oversell webp. If it was considered essential, 90% of web sites would use it.

Thanks, I appreciate your support, even though (I think) we disagree, but I guess I should ask, "Does it matter to you if Affinity added WebP export?" I don't think I am overselling webp. I never said it was essential, just a better option depending on the situation.

I am not trying start an argument with the points above, just countering your comments. When I shoot in RAW and process with Affinity, I have to first export to JPG or PNG and then to WebP – two conversions instead of one, obviously affecting image quality (and, yes, I understand that webp isn't as good to start with). Sure I could convert to Adobe, but aren't most of us here because we don't want to mortgage our appendages to Adobe?

So once again, the point of this thread is to ask Affinity to consider adding WebP support, which is all I really want to do. I'm not going to argue it's the one ring of imaging, I'm not even going to argue that it's the one ring of web imaging, it's just an option some of us would like to see added to the Affinity products.

[fde101]

On 12/27/2021 at 10:27 AM, spleeding said:

I have to first export to JPG or PNG and then to WebP

PNG is lossless so exporting to that first (assuming resolution matching that of your WebP output, etc.) should not result in further quality loss over a direct export to WebP.

JPG is lossy so that one will.

[2CEVENTS]

Some news about adding WebP to Affinity Photo ? Thanks

[Stocker.jp]

The latest version of Photoshop now supports WebP export.

I would like Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer to respond as soon as possible.
WebP is supported on all Evergreen browsers, including Safari.

[Miami Mann]

Hi there group,

 

Any idea when we will get WEBP format export options?

Thanks

[NoSi]

On 2/17/2022 at 4:04 PM, Miami Mann said:

Hi there group,

 

Any idea when we will get WEBP format export options?

Thanks

Promised for version 1.9 

Today I wanted to give it a try again and was heavily disappointed that after installing (licensed!) 1.10.4 webp is still missing despite announcement over two years ago.

Everyone can decide for themselves, what is personally acceptable, but the advantages of webp creating small file sizes with surprisingly low quality loss can not be beaten by any other format currently. Especially, if you require transparency.

Therefore, it is absolutely incomprehensible to me why it is still not possible to export webp. For me, it is thus still unusable, because if I need other programs anyway, so that webp comes out in the end, I can take the same. Which is regrettable, because I actually like AP quite well. 

But once I get involved with other programs: What do I need AP for then, and what's the point of looking at it over and over again?

[RD1976]

Hi folks,

I would like to second that wish for having the possibility to export images as webp. The format has been "in the wild" for quite some time and in the light of the ever more important requirements for page loading speed, it is now no longer an optional extra, but a must.
 

Any news on this subject would be great. Preferably positive news, of course, because that would help a great deal for projects to come.

 

[Burndog]

It's rather disappointing that the actual Developers have not weighed in on this matter or even responded.  😞

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Burndog said:

It's rather disappointing that the actual Developers have not weighed in on this matter or even responded.  😞

 

Serif staff generally do not respond in the Feature Requests & Suggestions forums, as a matter of policy. They will sometimes respond, if a user asks for something that is already available and no one else has mentioned that, or if a request is unclear and needs more details. But usually, they simply read this section of the forums and use the posts from the users as input to their planning process.

There's really not much they could meaningfully say, anyway. Serif does not disclose their future plans, so about all they could say would be:

• "No."
  or
• "Maybe someday we'll do something", with no hint of a timeframe or what will actually be implemented.

[Graymatter]

+1 on the need for webp export support.  AVIF export should also be added.

Having read most of the comments on this thread, I'm confused by @LondonSquirrel's dogged anti-webp export stance.  Additionally, after reading his post quoted below, I'm curious as to how he could confirm that sites he visited did not use the webp format.  Perhaps the sites simply didn't serve webp to him, due to his browser/OS's lack of ability to support them.

On 12/1/2021 at 4:05 AM, LondonSquirrel said:

I have no axe to grind about webp - I'm all in favour of supporting more export/import formats. However I have a question: I use Safari on Catalina and have no intention to update to Big Sur (where webp is supported). How will you handle me and my browser?