As of WordPress version 5.8, you can now upload WebP images in the same manner as JPEG or PNG images. Google’s extensive study shows that lossless WebP images are 26% smaller than PNGs and lossy WebP images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images, while maintaining the same SSIM quality index. This is fantastic news for all WordPress users!
However, using ShortPixel Image Optimizer to generate WebP files instead of uploading them directly to WordPress has some benefits:
- You can save a lot of time by avoiding the manual conversion of the original (JPG/PNG/GIF) to WebP.
- If you didn’t optimize them beforehand, directly uploaded WebP images to the website, like other formats (JPG/PNG/GIF), are not optimized. ShortPixel does not process WebP images. Besides, changing the default compression quality may result in under or over-optimized images.
- By utilizing ShortPixel to create WebP files from your original JPG/PNG/GIFs, you will have fallback images for browsers that do not yet support WebP (see caniuse.com).