Compress a WebP to 50KB

WebP already reaches a given size looking better than the older formats, so a fifty kilobyte target that would be punishing for a JPG is comfortable here. People arriving at this page usually want one of two things: a WebP made smaller, or a WebP turned into something a stubborn upload form will accept.

How should the settings be chosen?

    Staying in WebP

    For anything destined for a website or a chat application, keep the format. At fifty kilobytes WebP holds detail that a JPG of the same size loses, and it can carry transparency, which JPG cannot. A thousand pixels wide at this budget is a comfortable combination for most photographs.

    Re-compressing an existing WebP has the same caveat as any lossy format: you are working from a file that has already had detail removed. Start from the largest original you have where one exists.

    Converting out of WebP

    Government portals, older content systems and some desktop software still reject WebP outright, occasionally with a message that does not mention the format at all. Switching the output to JPEG here converts and compresses in one step.

    If the WebP has transparent areas, expect them to become white in the JPEG — that is a limitation of JPEG rather than a bug, and filling with white is the deliberate choice so a transparent logo does not arrive on a black background.

    Where WebP is not the answer

    For a screenshot full of small text, lossless PNG remains the better choice, since WebP in its lossy mode blurs hard edges just as JPG does. For an animated file, converting to a still format keeps only the first frame, which is rarely what anyone wants.

    Questions

    A website rejected my WebP. What should I convert it to?
    JPEG for photographs, which is accepted essentially everywhere, and PNG if the image has transparency or crisp text that must stay sharp. Set the output format here and the conversion happens as part of the compression, so it is one step rather than two.
    Is WebP better than JPG at the same file size?
    For photographs, clearly. At fifty kilobytes a WebP holds detail a JPG of the same size has already discarded, and the difference widens as the budget tightens. The only reason to prefer JPG is compatibility with something that will not accept anything else.
    Can I compress a WebP without converting it?
    Yes. Leave the output format as WebP and it stays WebP, with only the size reduced. That is what this page does by default, since most people arriving here want a smaller file rather than a different one.
    Where did my WebP file come from if I never chose that format?
    Saving a picture from a web page usually hands you whatever the site was serving, and most sites now serve WebP because it loads faster. That is why people meet the format for the first time when something refuses to accept it. Converting to JPEG here solves the immediate problem in a single step.

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