Working With WebP Images in Your Favorite Image Editor

February 7, 2019

Earlier this week I wrote a post entitled Using WebP Images With WordPress on our sister Web Design Solutions Unleashed site. Today I’m going to focus on working with WebP images in your favorite image editor.

The Simplest Solution—Don’t

If you read the post about using WebP with WordPress, the simplest answer is to continue posting images as JPG or PNG format as you’ve already been doing. For those looking for detailed instructions on creating the best JPG and PNG images from CorelDRAW and Corel PHOTO-PAINT, you may be interested in my CorelDRAW Web & Social Media Success Kit. This is a very good solution if you need to provide images for the Web. It isn’t a solution if you need to open a WebP image so there are other solutions for that.

Use a Plugin

The WebP format is not natively supported in Adobe Photoshop or Corel PHOTO-PAINT in the most recent releases as of this writing. If you are reading this in the future, native support could have been added after this was written. I’ve found two plugins that will allow you to open/save WebP images in the last several versions of Adobe Photoshop. I tested them in Adobe Photoshop CS6 and they worked great. I believe both of them claim to work as far back as Adobe Photoshop CS2. Unfortunately neither of them worked in Corel PHOTO-PAINT so there is no solution for opening/saving WebP images directly.

Both of the plugins have been ignored for the past couple of years. So they don’t necessarily support all of the latest features in the WebP format. While they are answers, they are not great answers. Both plugins are available for Mac and Windows and both have both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Using IrfanView

Loyal readers know that I’ve written countless times about the IrfanView viewer. Most of the time I use it purely as a quick way to view images. But it also can do image conversions and much more. The WebP format is natively supported by IrfanView. So you can view WebP files, convert them to JPG or PNG, or convert JPG and PNG files to WebP.

Best Answer?

I’m going to use a mixture of the first and last solutions. Until the software supports WebP natively, it isn’t worth using a plugin. If I need to put images on the Web, I’ll save them as JPG or PNG and let a WordPress plugin convert them. Should I be provided with a WebP image, I’ll use Irfanview to convert it to either PNG or JPG.

Post Discussion

2 Comments

  1. Danuel B. Cortez

    IrfanView does NOT natively support webp; on the latest version (4.53), you have to install the iv_formats.zip or (for simplicity) the full plugins package. Having to do this right now. Also, as an alternative for only viewing, Google offers the WebpCodecSetup.exe to simply install for Windows–lets Photo Viewer and Explorer view and generate thumbnails, respectively.

    Reply
  2. Hafizullah Chishti

    I generally just screenshot them from my browser and paste to Corel PhotoPaint from the clipboard.

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

You May Also Like…

Textures Unleashed Power Pack Volume 4

Fourth Power Pack of Seamless Textures Released

We created our first package of seamless textures more than seventeen years ago. Each of our packages has focused on a specific type of texture. They are offered in Pro Collections that have four different resolutions as high as 2048×2048 pixels as well as Lite...

View Full Post
Tech News Digest Graphics Unleashed

Tech News Digest for December 6, 2024

Raspberry Pi, Apple spying, messaging cyberattack, brain infection, Nova, Battlemage Arc, Redmagic 10, Jaguar and Thanksgiving rituals. With the Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday sales, there wasn’t as much in this week’s news. I’m excited that...

View Full Post
Tech News Digest Graphics Unleashed

Tech News Digest for November 29, 2024

Atari 7800+, SMS Blaster, Bootkitty, Rapunzel syndrome, Copilot+ PCs, GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, iPhone 17 Air, Ioniq 9 and Aztec death whistles. I know your inbox is probably flooded with messages about sales this week. While there are a few items listed below that are on...

View Full Post

Foster D. Coburn III

Foster D. Coburn III built his first Web site in 1995 and he has been working exclusively in WordPress since 2013. He has used the Divi theme exclusively since 2015. Earlier in his career he was the author of 13 best-selling books on CorelDRAW and has been a contributor to numerous technology and graphics-related magazines. Foster has taken many projects, including this Web site, from the early design stage through to a finished piece. He has been a featured speaker at many graphics conferences.

Recent Posts

Web Design Blog

Build Divi WordPress Site
WordPress Site Care
Divi Tools
Graphics Unleashed Logo