P: Please Provide Support for the WebP Image format

"They sometimes hear about customers asking"...  😛

Yes, customers have been asking for like EIGHT YEARS. But we really shouldn't have to nag to have basic support for common web image formats in an image editor imo. 😞

I reached out to a Photoshop Product Manager about this, and here's the latest:

Good to hear from you. We do sometimes hear about customers asking for WebP support, among many many other things. We are considering it for a future update, but in the meantime, there are multiple free plug-ins that add WebP support to Photoshop:

https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/webpshop

http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/product/WebPFormat

WebP has become a dominant image format on many web sites. I'm having to use Irfanview to convert WebP images since (as of 27 Apr 2021) my Photoshop CC 2021 still does not provide a native Webp format import capability!

I need this every day in my work. Please, please add WebP import!   

It's about time Photoshop has native WebP integration. 3rd party plugins are available but i've been told by support that using them will break my Program. 

WebP is everywhere now... It's really hot in web development, especially with Google's Core Web Vitals performance metrics rolling out imminently:

Serve images in next-gen formats

Image formats like JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP often provide better compression than PNG or JPEG, which means faster downloads and less data consumption.

https://web.dev/uses-webp-images/

Dear Photoshop, please support WebP natively.

GetHub's plug-in to open * webp files and save as * webp file doesn't work for me. Adobe does not support help with a third-party plug-in. Although the help offered was determined that she would arrange the solution for me, the plug-in did not work anyway. Difficult and inconvenient and time consuming to visit an online converter every time. The question remains; Who has a satisfactory solution for opening and saving as of * webp files in photoshop?

In het Nederlands:

De plug-in van GetHub om *webp bestanden te openen en om op te slaan als *webp bestand werkt bij mij niet. Adobe ondersteund geen hulp bij een third-party plug in. Hoewel de aangeboden hulp gedecideerd was dat zij de oplossing voor me zou regelen, bleek de plug-in toch niet te werken. Lastig en onhandig en tijdrovend om daar telkens een online converter voor te bezoeken. Resteerd de vraag; Wie heeft een afdoende oplossing voor het openen en opslaan als van *webp-bestanden in photoshop?

I teach Photoshop. I tell my students it is a great professional app and if they want to have a graphics career they need to know how to use it. Then they come to me and ask why it can't handle webp format. They say that it handles a bunch of formats they have never heard of or will use, but not one they encounter every day. They want to know why it is "the" professional app if it is not keeping up with the industry and why such an expensive program can't open a simple web picture when free apps can. So, Adobe what should tell them?

Come on Adobe, I spent over thirty years developing and managing software projects mostly in the graphics industry. This is a simple thing to do. We pay you a lot of money to provide professional quality tools, we don't pay you to play politics with Google. Are you trying to make Photoshop go the way of Flash?

This post is from back in 2013 and there is still no native support for WebP. The plugin listed as an official solution isn't even updated for Creative Cloud. This needs to be implemented.

I encourage Adobe to support .webp on both Photoshop and Lightroom. It is becoming used on several browsers and Apple supports it in Safari on ipads. I suspect Safari support on macs will follow soon. 

Adobe has always been good about supporting new formats. I think a plug-in is not a good permanent solution.

2/27/21

I support for .webp too. Apple supports is now on Safari on iPads and I suspect will support it soon on Macs. (2/27/21). Probably in the next release of Catalina.

Abode has always been good about keeping up and I hope this is not an exception. Plug-ins are not the answer for a widely used format.