Eye on the Prize: Google Tests Out New JPEG Killer

[zarx]

smaller web images? yay

http://www.tested.com/news/eye-on-the-prize-google-tests-out-new-jpeg-killer/1059/

Will JPEG ever die? The most popular image format has been going strong for nearly 20 years, relying on a dated compression algorithm devised in 1992 even as technology gave us faster transfer speeds and swelling harddrives. Once JPEG took over and dug in its heels, nothing could uproot it. JPEG2000 couldn’t do it, even though it offered an updated format with superior compression and fewer artifacts. Microsoft apparently couldn’t do it with Windows Media Photo, which became HD Photo, and was finally rebranded as JPEG XR. Yeah, we’ve never used it, either.

If the JPEG organization and Microsoft can’t replace the original JPEG, can anyone? The right answer, of course, is “Maybe Google can do it!” While Google hasn’t exactly embarked on a quest to eradicate JPEG from the web, the company apparently thinks it’s time for something new. The Chrome team hopes that something new is WebP, a lossy image format offering reduced file sizes compared to JPEG--without reduced image quality.

Here’s what you need to know about Google and WebP.

The Chrome mantra has always been speed. Naturally, Google’s done plenty of research to figure out how to build the leanest, meanest web browser. According to their statistics, about 65% of the data on web pages today is image data, and the majority of those images are JPEGs. No big surprise there. So, to make the web faster, we need to make those images smaller. Simple, right?

WebP is built out of the VP8 video codec, and uses a RIFF-based container that’s pretty tiny--starting at just 20 bytes--but can be expanded to include additional meta data. After converting about a million random JPEGS, PNGs and GIFs culled from around the web, Google found that its WebP format reduced file sizes by an average of 39%. Google also set up a gallery of comparison shots (the WebP images currently use a PNG container) with the filesizes of each format. With squinty eyes and ferocious concentration, we could make out a barely perceptible loss of detail in one WebP image, but at a 75% reduced filesize. And, as Google points out, results will likely be better when converting uncompressed photos to WebP, rather than going from one lossy format to another.

Google plans to patch WebKit to make WebP images viewable in a new release of Chrome, which means Safari could likely adopt the file format with little effort. Google also plans to add alpha channel transparency to WebP, which would make the format far more valuable. Smaller filesizes are great, but a lossy format that beats JPEG’s compression and offers PNG’s transparency? That’s a head-turner.

Want to make your own WebP pictures? Check out Google’s page here. We all know JPEG isn’t going to be dethroned anytime soon, but isn’t it about time something new and better became the web standard?