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what are .webp files and why has my online experience been plagued by them? (lemm.ee)
submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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I don't know what a .webp file is but I don't like it. They're like a filthy prank version of the image/gif you're looking for. They make you jump through all these hoops to find the original versions of the files that you can actually do anything with.

Edit: honestly I assumed it had something to do with Google protecting themselves from image piracy shit

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[–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

I also very often encounter huge PNG photos with their extensions changed to JPG, and I don’t know how or why that is happening.

Probably people uploading to sites that limit extensions thinking they're clever by just changing the extension, or being straight up wrong in thinking the extension changing actually changes the file type.

The sites might not bother to check the metadata, and anything worth any salt that displays the image will ignore the extension anyway.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    That sounds logical, but on most operating systems these days the extension is hidden, and/or you need to go through some hoops to change it. So I would think that most people who think that wouldn't even know how to change it.

    But more importantly, where do those PNGs come from in the first place? Sure, some are clearly screenshots such as of IG or TT, but there are tons of large PNG images that are clearly photos from cameras that someone just took and resaved as png (and later, or someone else, then renamed to jpg).

    I could understand that happening occasionally for a bunch of reasons, but I've encountered this so many times, it's pretty bizarre.

    Btw it's something you might not even notice if you aren't using e.g. an image viewer that uses a different icon or background based on actual image type.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    I suppose another solution might be that it falls under those lines, but some misbehaving services where they're uploaded are giving out improper filenames and not confirming the type.

    Though I can't imagine many of those being incredibly popular, or, it's just that images are recycled for so long that eventually many of them hit such a site in their lifetimes.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)
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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Yet you still posted it in jpeg. Can't fool me with your sly tricks.

    Input #0, image2, from '85974f2f-5463-40ba-93ea-45417c183fcc.jpeg':
  Duration: 00:00:00.04, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 54211 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj444p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 1513x947, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 25 tbn
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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Good point lol

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (1 child)

    Just for you, I turned it into webp and made it 40KB. I could have also made it look less like garbage, but then it would have been 50KB, which is unacceptable.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Lemmy's official conversions is 124 kB. Next time I'm making a meme, I'll see how small I can make the size with webp. Should be better when I'm working from my original and not an already compressed jpeg.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    After reading through more comments in this discussion, maybe I have my answer, at least partially. A lot of people here suggest to use extensions and other ways to convert webp from the web to... PNG.

    And then that PNG gets shared further...

    Oh gawd if that's why so many pngs are on the net... What a way to take a good idea and completely fuck it up. Now instead of a 2MB jpeg or 0.5MB webp we deal with 10MB pngs 🤦‍♂️

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