JPEG and PNG have been the most widely used image formats for the past 25 years, but that is changing. They are being replaced by two more modern formats, WebP and AVIF. even if it means dozens of incompatibility issues. If you downloaded an image and it’s a format that you can’t open instead of being jpg, it could be because it’s a WebP or AVIF image and your operating system, program or website hasn’t been updated to work with that format.

The advantages of these new formats are obvious: they are open source, maximize the size of images, have less loss of quality, are compatible with GIF-style animated images, and in general let web pages be much more agile.

We can agree that there are enough weighty arguments to make bets on these formats worthwhile. However, the adoption process is slower than desired and users encounter many errors in the process.

What good is it if we can’t open those images?

Google created WebP (Web Image Format) in 2010, but it wasn’t until then. When the first library to support this new format is completed in mid-2018. Since then, such images have been gradually expanded, promising a size of 26% lighter than PNG and 34% smaller than JPEG.

Google Chrome is the main support for this format, but thankfully it is also compatible with Safari from version 14, macOS Sierra, Mozilla Firefox from 2019 and Microsoft Edge from 2020.

Example of error in WordPress when trying to upload AVIF image.

Today the format is widely supported, but there are many tools that have only added support in recent updates. From LibreOffice to WordPress. This means that if we have a WebP image and we want to upload it to the web, it will usually throw an error. Fortunately, since 2020 most major programs have chosen to include WebP support. Pixelmator to Photoshop.

this the problem is more common when working with small tools. Support for PNG and JPEG is generally complete, but it’s less common for a lesser-known program or a website that doesn’t have a lot of resources to work perfectly with WebP. Many Linux image viewers also lack basic WebP support.

A solution when we have a WebP image convert it to jpeg. There are many options here. First of all, try to download directly as JPEG by changing the web url. Most of these images end in .webp, but substituting .jpeg sometimes allows us to download the same image in a format we know is widely supported.

If that doesn’t work, another option is to open WebP with an image editing program. It could be the same Paint. We can choose JPEG by ‘Save As’ or ‘Export’ option.

AVIF, history repeats itself (and support is even smaller)

If WebP is the first attempt to de-dominate JPEG and PNG, AVIF will become the imaging standard of the next decade. AVIF’s efficiency is superior to JPEG in all tests as well as WebP. Created by Google, in contrast, AVIF is an open format championed by the entire industry and developed by the Alliance for Open Media in 2019.

Image: Netflix

AVIF is a format derived from the AV1 video codec. And its advantages over WebP are many; AVIF supports 12-bit color HDR imagesFor 10-bit HEIF or 8-bit WebP.

But we still encounter the same problem. It is true that these formats are more modern and useful, but we users find that not all programs are compatible with them and we end up downloading images that we cannot use later.

Having a more modern format, AVIF still has less support than WebP. We’ll need Google Chrome or Firefox to use these images, but it doesn’t work halfway in Microsoft Edge, Safari, and support has only been added since iOS 16.

Image: can i use it

It’s about browsers. If we go to operating systems, we have a similar problem: we will need the latest versions for AVIF to work. In the case of Microsoft, Windows 10 or higher will be required, in the case of macOS, an update to macOS Ventura, which was introduced this year, will be required. why does this happen Unless we have a high-end computer, we will not be able to open AVIF images that are already available on many websites..

AVIF has many arguments for being the dominant format on the web on both desktop and mobile devices. Due to its low size and excellent compression, many websites add jpg to replace it by default. But we are in a race. On the one hand, this format becomes widespread on the internet, and on the other hand, all the tools and programs we use are updated so that we can work with this format. JPEG or PNG was no problem, but it’s time to change them.