WebP: Manage the open source image format on GNU / Linux

WebP is a Image format de open source created by Google several years ago, to improve the image management when doing them lighter keeping a Best Quality, in order to make it faster to load and display on websites.

Since then, said new open and alternative standard to popular and traditional image formats, such as JPG, PNG y GIF, has been being used more and more every day, not only on the web but on apps, such as WhatsApp y Telegram to create your Stickers, thanks to its many benefits.

Many years ago, specifically in January 2013, in the Blog FromLinux we talk about the format WebP and on how to implement a patch on GIMP. Since at that time, 5 years after the format was created WebP it had not been implemented by said application of GNU / Linux.

Nowadays, the procedure described above is no longer necessary, since the package «gimp-webp» is included in many repositories of many GNU / Linux Distros. And the support via library, is currently available in some under the package «libwebp5» o «libwebp6».

WebP: Open Source Image Format

The format WebP has a Official website where it is described as:

"WebP is a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster.".

In addition, it highlights that:

"WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. Lossy WebP images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images with an equivalent SSIM quality rating. Lossless WebP supports transparency (also known as alpha channel) at a cost of only 22% additional bytes. For cases where lossy RGB compression is acceptable, lossy WebP also supports transparency, typically providing 3 × smaller file sizes compared to PNG".

Thumbnails of WebP images in Thunar

In my case, as I use a modified version of MX Linux, which uses the XFCE Desktop Environment natively, the method used successfully to display the thumbnails in the Thunar File Explorer It was the following:

• Create a file called «webp.thumbnailer» with the following command command:

«sudo nano /usr/share/thumbnailers/webp.thumbnailer»

• Insert the following content and save and close the created file:

[Thumbnailer Entry] Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=X-Thumbnailer
Name=webp Thumbnailer
MimeType=image/webp;
Exec=/usr/bin/convert -thumbnail %s %i %o

• Restart the user session and test by opening Thunar to view thumbnails of images WebP.

View and edit WebP images

For such tasks, I recommend using the pictures viewer Nomacs and the image editor XnConvert. Not all imaging applications are still supported, with the format WebP Some of them that I still can't get them to view and edit the images WebP es GPicView e Inkscape.

Online tools to create (convert) images to WebP

In case of, not having on hand about GNU / Linux a good application for such work, there are always many good tools online to convert many things, such as file formats images. But specifically for images WebP we recommend trying: Convertio.

Finally, if you want more information about how the format WebP is used to create Telegram and WhatsApp stickers, click the next link.

We hope this "useful little post" about the open source image format called «WebP» created by Google several years ago, and on how to manage images with this format on GNU / Linux; be a lot interest and utility, For the whole «Comunidad de Software Libre y Código Abierto» and of great contribution to the diffusion of the wonderful, gigantic and growing ecosystem of applications of «GNU/Linux».

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