Google wants to replace PNG too

[m^2]

The purpose of this study is to share some preliminary results for two new modes in WebP, lossless encoding mode and transparency (also known as alpha channel) support. Whereas existing WebP encoding is lossy even at the highest quality setting (100), the new WebP-lossless encoding exactly preserves the bits in every pixel of a true-color image with alpha (RGBA).

The most popular lossless image format on the web is PNG (Portable Network Graphics). So we first compare the compression ratio of WebP-lossless to PNG.

https://code.google.com/speed/webp/d...pha_study.html

There are no good comparisons yet.
You can find a number of bad ones here.

[PatRaceTin]

hmmmm i think PNG is good for me

[Scubar]

Never had a problem with PNG, will be sticking with it.

[Hornet331]

They can't even replace jpeg... now they want to replace png... yeah next pls...

[STaRGaZeR]

This will fail as hard as WebM did (or does).

[Evantaur]

i love PNG, replace JPEG instead...

[XSAlliN]

They can always try to force it... this being Google.

Personally, i find APNG more interesting than this and hopping that would get popular - being something new and a good replacement for .gif wile this has long before it could replace anything or become a standard (even with google forcing it).

[N19h7m4r3]

Replace jpeg with PNG permanently and everything will be good

I'm tired of bad jpeg quality, specially in my course in Multimedia. Ugh post grad students still using jpeg for image work is dreadful :/

[spicypixel]

I welcome the improvements if they make it completely open for people to use like webm.

[XSAlliN]

Replace jpeg with PNG permanently and everything will be good

I'm tired of bad jpeg quality, specially in my course in Multimedia. Ugh post grad students still using jpeg for image work is dreadful :/

Neah... JPEG is still good generally speaking, you just have to remember to covert it to PNG when editing and when done switched back to JPEG. For example - you can't see any quality difference from a 2.5 MB .png photo converted in 90% quality .jpeg - but the difference in size is huge (from a 2.5 Mb .png can result a 350 Kb .Jpeg). Of course, you might see the differences if you keep editing that .JPEG file, but as long as you do the editing with the file as .png and only save it's done in .jpeg won't make much difference in quality, but a huge difference in size. That doesn't mean you should have all files as .jpeg - but something in between (.jpeg and .png) it's advisable, only reason why .jpeg is still popular (if .jpeg couldn't offer quality just smaller size, it have been replaced long ago by other formats).

PS.Same goes for .mp3 vs .flac or .ape.

[Manicdan]

Neah... JPEG is still good generally speaking, you just have to remember to covert it to PNG when editing and when done switched back to JPEG. For example - you can't see any quality difference from a 2.5 MB .png photo converted in 90% quality .jpeg - but the difference in size is huge (from a 2.5 Mb .png can result a 350 Kb .Jpeg). Of course, you might see the differences if you keep editing that .JPEG file, but as long as you do the editing with the file as .png and only save it's done in .jpeg won't make much difference in quality, but a huge difference in size. That doesn't mean you should have all files as .jpeg - but something in between (.jpeg and .png) it's advisable, only reason why .jpeg is still popular (if .jpeg couldn't offer quality just smaller size, it have been replaced long ago by other formats).

PS.Same goes for .mp3 vs .flac or .ape.

agreed, i do some rendering and save it all as PNG, then throw it into gimp and do a 90% quality conversion to JPEG and the file size drops 10 fold, but the quality is identical to my eyes.

[m^2]

As to JPEG - it depends, it's OK for photos, but not for graphics, sharp edges look bad even at 90%.
After thinking about the new webp developments for quite some time today, I have mixed feelings...
1. It's great that sb. tries to introduce a lossy format with transparency.
2. webp lossless is unsuitable as a replacement for PNG, at least not for all uses. It's bad for anything big, for example. Also, unless they do something drastic, it's unsuitable for image edition. Even with a tiny 1/4 MB file (uncompressed) saving in the fastest mode would take 20 seconds right now.
3. Even for the purpose of storing lossless web images, it seems crap. Now there's very little data, only 1 user made tests on small graphics and BCIF beat it significantly. So why didn't they hire a professional for the job? I'm really dissatisfied with this.

EDIT:
As to point 3 I made a big error, that user compared it to BMF, not BCIF. There is no data at all then.

[XSAlliN]

As to JPEG - it depends, it's OK for photos, but not for graphics, sharp edges look bad even at 90%.

Not really, you can also set it at 100% and still get at least half the size - but starting from 90% should be fine... I prefer .png mostly for logos and situation where .png is the best way to go like - "alpha transparency" (since .jpeg can't handle that)...

[defect9]

as a web designer, I like the big 3. jpg, png, and gif. thankfully photoshop and corel both have that "save for web" option that lets me compare quality and file size quickly.

[m^2]

Not really

I clicked on 3 images and all were PNGs...but it doesn't matter:

, you can also set it at 100% and still get at least half the size - but starting from 90% should be fine... I prefer .png mostly for logos and situation where .png is the best way to go like - "alpha transparency" (since .jpeg can't handle that)...

I never used it, but I just did quick and dirty tests, it indeed looks OK. On 1 image it was visually lossless. And only 375% bigger. On pic 2 it was blurred, but very slightly and smaller by 15%. Pic 3 was the best of them, slightly blurred too and smaller by 1/3. Maybe it's because I optimize my PNGs?
The JPEGs were optimized too BTW.

Nevertheless I believe that there are cases where it's good, like I said what I did was quick and dirty. Though I hardly believe that the savings are worth the time spent on visual inspection.
This is the reason why I keep all images an music lossless for archiving purposes - the cost of quality assessment greatly overweights any savings. Also for me the risk of significantly loosing quality because of my negligence overweights the savings too.

[XSAlliN]

Was talking about a format used for web and sometimes .jpeg helps (sometimes helps a lot) but at 100% quality - you can use it even for prints ( for example ) - most digital art on DeviatArt is in .jpeg format for same reason (same reason your avatar is .jpeg and not .png).

Even tho .png is suppose to preserve quality, if your work is crappy in terms of quality will also look crappy when saved - doesn't matter if it's in .png or .jpeg.

WebP is compared to PNG cause of alpha transparency - which is something .jpeg can't do... So basically, what they're saying is that "WebP can do all that .PNG can do but it can also reach the size of a .Jpeg file... " which is what they tried to prove with their tests:

WebP-lossless: Lossless encoding mode for WebP (RGBA).
WebP-alpha: Lossy encoding mode for WebP with transparency (RGBA).

... so in future, it could replace both .png and .jpeg which are the most popular image formats. Who knows - maybe in future it will be capable of animation as well... Maybe in future the entire web will be owned by google.

[m^2]

Shameless plug:
I made a comparison of Webp Lossless, PNG, JPEG2000, JPEG-LS and BCIF on web-sourced PNGs.
Click.

[m^2]

Shameless plug:
I made a comparison of Webp Lossless, PNG, JPEG2000, JPEG-LS and BCIF on web-sourced PNGs.
Click.