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Forums - PC - Eye on the Prize: Google Tests Out New JPEG Killer

zarx on 02 October 2010

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?

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wfz on 02 October 2010

Reducing the file size by 75% and holding onto the quality is beast.



NJ5 on 02 October 2010

Good, now we just have to kill Flash and maybe we can browse the web with good performance again.



My Mario Kart Wii friend code: 2707-1866-0957

Bullet100000 on 02 October 2010
NJ5 said:

Good, now we just have to kill Flash and maybe we can browse the web with good performance again.


This.



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*Al Bundy For President*

Waiting On GT7!!!

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Rainbird on 02 October 2010

I really hope this catches on so we can browse faster!



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d21lewis on 02 October 2010

Can You spot the differences?

  That's right.  The one on the left prefers grilled cheese sandwiches!


dobby985 on 02 October 2010

I thought PNG replaced JPEG.



ebw on 02 October 2010

PNG is a lossless compression format that is far more suitable as a GIF replacement than JPEG.  It is ideal for non-photographic images with large sections of repetitive colours (e.g. screenshots, buttons).  GIF is similar, but it only supports 256 colours.  PNG is also required for any images with an alpha (opacity) mask, as neither JPEG nor GIF fully support this (neither did IE for years and years...before Firefox really caught on, Microsoft's browser team was asleep at the wheel and did nothing to fix any bugs).

However, for photographic (continuous-tone) images, PNG's compression is very weak, and much smaller files than are possible by judiciously throwing away some of the information that our eyes won't miss too much.  This is the role that JPEG serves, and PNG does nothing to address that.  I really don't think WebP will catch on, any more than the dud that is WebM, but as someone said earlier, it would be nice to have a format combining the size advantage of JPEG and the transparency features of PNG.