[thecsw]

Hi! This is the author of the post here. Thank you all for your input and discussion of the term "goated" and different photo formats! I'm not super into photography, I focused mainly on what looks good from a casual browsing experince and also saves space for me.

I want to note that there are formats that are meant to supersede WebP, such as AVIF and JPEG XL, however, AVIF (69.25%, I also mainly use Safari) [1] and JPEG XL (0%) [2] are not as nearly adopted as WebP is (91.38%) [3]. Usage taken on April 13th, 2022. Also, get a browser released after 2013.

[1] https://caniuse.com/avif [2] https://caniuse.com/jpegxl [3] https://caniuse.com/webp

[dTal]

You would have achieved similarly amazing compression results if you had converted your PNGs to ordinary jpgs - no "state of the art stuff" required. You say you don't care whether it's lossy or lossless as long as it looks good - why were you using such an inappropriate format for photos on the web in the first place?

[thecsw]

True, jpegs would have achieved similar. I liked PNGs over the years because of the alpha channel, which was super useful. WebP is the only format I know that is both lossy and has an alpha channel.

[oehpr]

Sure, but... the pictures here don't have alpha channels.

[thecsw]

I agree with you, it might not have chosen the best example pictures to use. Something with an alpha channel png->webp could be a better showcase. Thanks