no bug Conversion to webp format kills Exif data

[Jochen_G]

Hello all, and first off, thanks for this fantastic tool, I only wish there would be a Linux port

But now the problem, when converting an image to webp format all Exif information is being removed / killed (in this case GPS data specifically).

I do not know if this is really a bug or just a limitation of some kind, all I was able to gather is, that webp does seem to support Exif in general.

Is there any way to avoid / fix this?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Not a bug. IrfanView only supports the export of Exif data for JPG images.

[Jochen_G]

Thanks a lot for this information. Is there a chance this is could or will be implemented some day? Unfortunately webp is favored (by google) nowadays, so on a long run it will replace jpg (for web purposes at least) to some degree.

[JendaLinda]

Is EXIF really neccessary for web usage? I always remove all metadata before publishing photos on the web.

[Jochen_G]

Depends on your needs I suppose. We use it for geotagging to associate pictures to cities so that google can find the pictures when the city is searched

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I see no purpose for Exif data in WebP images. Where it is useful is on sites for sharing high quality photographic images where the users may be interested in details about camera settings, etc., whereas the primary advantage of WebP is to save on bandwidth.

I don't see much sign yet of WebP catching on. I use some on my website, to reduce bandwidth for high resolution images, but information about the photos is included on the web pages as captions.

What I do see is a few complaints about browsers downloading WebP versions instead of the JPG versions. People who download images usually want the best quality.

[JendaLinda]

GPS data in photos are privacy concern as it's possible to tell where extacly the photo was taken.

If you know what are you doing, you can keep all those data in EXIF. You may use cwebp program to convert your images to webp and copy the metadata. Download the libwebp package from here:

https://storage.googleapis.com/downloads.webmproject.org/releases/webp/index.html

[Jochen_G]

GPS data in photos are privacy concern as it's possible to tell where extacly the photo was taken.

For these photos that is EXACTLY what we want

Thank you very much!!!

[insectinegate]

I use irfanview to view my own photos and to convert them into webp (jpeg compression on my xiaomi phone is very bad, I compress photos 8x better without no visible difference). It's a pity that irfanview in 2023 still cannot into exif.
Does webp have exif support?

[JendaLinda]

WebP is intended for low resolution pictures on the web, not for archiving photos. Anyway, software allowing to encode WebP images including EXIF is linked above. It's a command line tool, ideal for performing batch conversion.

[insectinegate]

WebP is intended for low resolution pictures on the web, not for archiving photos. Anyway, software allowing to encode WebP images including EXIF is linked above. It's a command line tool, ideal for performing batch conversion.

Really? Is it written somewhere? In what format should the photos be stored then?
I used to use irfanview for viewing and batch conversion. But it looks like the program is hopelessly outdated. Even if I convert photos with another program - Ifranview cannot display metadata.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

About WebP from the developers' own web page.

IrfanView is a Swiss Army knife image viewer If you require specialist Photo Editing features, use Adobe Photoshop or a similar program.
IrfanView, with its single developer, will never compete with such massive programs with a whole team of developers. Other small tools are available for manipulating Exif data.

[JendaLinda]

WebP uses VP8 video codec for lossy compression. VP8 was developed for streaming video at low bitrates. It was never meant for high quality images.
There is no modern image format that could fully replace JPEG.

[insectinegate]

About WebP from the developers' own web page.

IrfanView is a Swiss Army knife image viewer If you require specialist Photo Editing features, use Adobe Photoshop or a similar program.
IrfanView, with its single developer, will never compete with such massive programs with a whole team of developers. Other small tools are available for manipulating Exif data.

Lol, did he write webp support himself or did he connect the 3rd party library?

In any case. I've been using Irfanview since the 90s, but it looks like it's time to look for a replacement.

[insectinegate]

WebP uses VP8 video codec for lossy compression. VP8 was developed for streaming video at low bitrates. It was never meant for high quality images.
There is no modern image format that could fully replace JPEG.

No idea what it was developed for, but it offers smaller size and better quality as JPEG. JPEG is hopelessly outdates. Modern Iphones don't take photos in jpeg.