HEIC to WebP, in one step
For iPhone photos going onto a website. Converting straight from the HEIC means the picture is decoded once and encoded once, instead of the usual trip through JPG that compresses it twice for no reason.
See what the quality setting does
Drag the line to compare the original with the JPEG at the quality you chose. The loupe shows a 3× crop under your pointer.
Why go direct
The normal route is HEIC to JPG, then JPG to WebP, because those are the two tools people can find. That is two lossy encodes. The JPG throws detail away, and then WebP approximates what the JPG left. Going straight from the HEIC skips the middle step entirely: the photo is decoded from its original once, and written to WebP once.
The difference is not dramatic on a holiday snapshot viewed on a phone. On a large hero image, a photograph with a smooth sky, or anything a visitor will look at closely, it can be visible — and going direct avoids it at no extra cost.
When WebP is the right target
- The photo is going onto a web page you control. Every browser reads WebP, and the file is smaller than the equivalent JPG.
- You are preparing a gallery or a portfolio and page weight matters.
- You want one format for both photographs and graphics with transparency.
When it isn't
Safari cannot save WebP from a web page at all. The converter will tell you so rather than hand you a file with the wrong name, but if you are on Safari use Chrome, Edge or Firefox for this one.
WebP is made for web pages. Outside the browser, support is patchier: email recipients, print shops and some desktop software may not open it. For anything going to a person rather than onto a page, convert to JPG. If you need every pixel kept for editing, convert to PNG.
What happens to the photo's details
The date, camera and location are not carried into the WebP. This converter writes EXIF into JPEG output only, so the "keep photo details" option is dimmed when WebP is selected. That is a limit of this tool rather than of the format — WebP itself can carry EXIF, but nothing here puts it there.
For photos going onto a public website, losing the location is usually what you want anyway. If you are unsure what your photos are currently carrying, the EXIF tool shows you before you publish anything.
How much smaller
It depends on the photograph, and any single percentage you read somewhere is true only of the pictures that author tested. The format benchmark encodes your own files at every quality setting and reports the real byte counts, including the point where the file starts growing faster than the picture improves. It runs in your browser too, so you can measure a client's photographs without sending them anywhere.