In general terms, do you think that WebP specs are better than jpg, png, gif (animated mostly), tga?
Do you think that it’s time to say good bye to all of these old and ineffective image formats and switch to a modern that is more robust and effective?
My opinion is that it seems that WebP is written from scratch by brilliant scientists, it is based on modern ideas and techniques and that means that studies and lessons learned from the history can be used in a positive way. Also licence is another very important fact, because WebP is open and permissive (BSD) can lead to successful worldwide spread. It’s no accident as you can see, that there is already a remarkable interest by many projects and show us early signs WebP rising.
For the other image formats I can not say that they suck, from a practical mindset you simply use whatever image format is available and then be happy with it. There is no problem with the file formats and everything can remain the same, the problem is that the mindset behind all of these image formats is dumb (heritage from the 90s):
They are not exactly outdated, but based on today’s standards they could be better.
These image formats are held under strict control and are liable to patents.
It’s doubtful if anyone can freely modify or improve the standard. Even if there is an open source committee dedicated to support the format it is doubtful if anyone can improve the algorithm without harming patent holders.
Each image format is an improved version of the other and fills the blanks that others missing (e.g. png has transparency where jpg has not, but gif has animation that png has not, but gif is not so great with size and quality).
If you imagine that an computer image is a representation of a paper/print/photograph. But in the digital world you can bend the rules and twist this concept. That’s why I think that moving images could provide better snapshots of time within a period of time and animated images must become popular. Due to the problems of animated gif you can forget this concept, but with WebP it worth a try.
That’s all for now, I hope that these words make sense. My intention is not to troll you or to scare you but more of an open discussion, something like a brainstorm about this issue.
P.S. If we agree and we are on the same page why not ask a fellow developer to bring us WebP to Blender?
from a practical mindset you save an image, you watch an image, you distribute an image and have sooo many options (you lucky you), then you can peacefully sleep at night without nightmares (taken the blue pill obviously)
You’ve lost me here !
Another way to look at this is whether or not it’s a better format, how many other apps out there are going to follow suit and incorporate it into their apps. There’s hundreds—thousands. Example: Adobe won’t add it unless camera companies all add it. I could go on, but you get my drift.
Blender uses openimageio and that library has supported WebP for quite a while now. Not that anyone has asked for that format before. It doesn’t appear to allow anything that can’t be done with simple existing formats like PNG. And it can’t do nearly what EXR can do. Does anyone really care about file size anymore?
VP8 works exclusively with an 8-bit YUV 4:2:0 image format. In this format, each 8-bit pixel in the two chroma planes (U and V) corresponds positionally to a 2x2 block of 8-bit luma pixels in the Y plane.
To quote the Wikipedia article on WebP:
… which may cause color loss on images with thin contrast elements (such as in pixel art and computer graphics) and ghosting in anaglyph.
Arexma is correct: webP is meant (mainly) for use on the web, to save bandwidth and remedy some of the shortcomings of other formats. And high compression rates generally mean the loss of part of the information of the original image.
If you want, you could always render to a lossless format like png, and convert to webP.
Shameless plug: the newer betas of Photoline already support webP in the web export!
Richard Marklew: You’ve lost me here !
I have rephrased that part to make more sense now.
GLakie: How many other apps out there are going to follow suit and incorporate it into their apps.
Good question, in the next 5 years probably no one natively, but as plugins wherever possible. That does not mean it can not be supported at any given time, though this depends on interest explosion (as for commercial corporations need to invest money, same goes for open source developers that need to invest time). Why support something that is useless, right?
Harley:Does anyone really care about file size anymore?
This is also a good question, perhaps this can be proved on a macroscale mostly. Like saying that if you decide to use either WebP lossless or lossy you get either half or 1/3 of the storage accordingly. Also on the Web and Mobile computing where optimized resources are far better for many reasons it could be the a success. Also I don’t know if the 4K fever hits the mainstream market, but that would mean another reason for us content producers to worry about.
arexma: Not exactly what you want in a CG application…
This looks serious threat to WebP, though I will try to find if it’s serious enough to make it worthless.
I don’t see how this format is relevant to Blender. There is no content produced in WebP by devices, they all use established formats like JPEG. Also, Blender is not really a good program for compressing your final output. It can be done, but it can be done better by other programs.
As for the “lossless” aspect of WebP: It still uses YUV so you’re bound to lose at least some information through that color transform. In CG, it’s best to stay with RGB and the existing formats are all “good enough”.
