Category: Ubuntu Mate
Added: 9th of December 2021
Updated On: 1st of April 2024
Viewed: 2,316 times
This article was updated and rechecked on 1st of April 2024
Convert image in .png format to .webp on Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distributions
The webp image format has been around for quite a few years, but I only recently found out about it. The Webp image format greatly reduces the file size without losing any quality over formats such as .gif, .png and jpeg.
Gimp on Linux already has this function to export as webp, but you can also install the webp package in Ubuntu or Ubuntu based distributions to convert images to the webp format using the terminal.
With the basic command for converting one image below, you could create a bash script to take a folder of .png images or mixed images and convert these .webp format.
To install webp enter the following command
sudo apt-get install webp
I decided to download the Tux image from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tux.png which is saved in
.png image and convert this to
.webp format
Enter the following command
cwebp Tux.png -o Tux.webp
You can also convert images in .gif and .jpeg format to .webp
Below is the original Tux.png image, and below that is the Tux.webp image.
Quality wise they both images look identical, but more interestingly is the overall file size.
Tux.png image
11.9kb
Tux.webp image
4.6kb
If your displaying a lot of images across your website in .webp format, you will make a considerable saving on the file sizes compared to .gif, .png, and .jpeg formats, which also means a faster download of all images for visitors to your website.
Please visit
https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/gallery1 for further information about webp