November 2, 2022

According to Wikipedia, the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987.

That is the intellectual definition of it. But to simply put, it means moving pictures (or animated pictures). What I like about GIFs is that they are short and you can loop the animation forever.

You can use any software you prefer to create your GIFs as long as the software has the option to export to GIFs. As for me, I use Adobe Premiere Pro to create GIFs. Photoshop also has this option.

This isn’t the case anymore because I recently found out about WebP. And Wikipedia said that it is an image file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and “GIF” file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as “animation” and alpha transparency.

So why do I like it better than GIF now? It’s because of the output quality. GIFs always have these grainy and pixelated textures which I really don’t like even if I’m using high-quality images.

[This image is in a GIF file format.]

[This image is in a WebP file format.]

Based on the researches that I did, it’s all because of the compression happening during the exporting process. Thus, I couldn’t do anything about it. On the other hand, although Photoshop is performing better than Premiere Pro, I still looked for other ways to fix this idiosyncratic issue of mine. I like beautiful things and I am a bit of a perfectionist so I want my work (most of my work, if possible) to be almost perfect and beautiful.

After my scrupulous research and experimentation, I stumbled upon this WebP file format and this solved my problem entirely. Even if I have to add additional steps in the process, I don’t mind. As long as I can create magnificent results, I’m satisfied.

Here are some of the WebP examples that I did.

The first animated image that I created was this kiss-“GIF” with my girlfriend and niece. I used Photoshop to create this. But please take note, this isn’t a GIF anymore. Originally, it was. This is a WebP file now since I intended to use it on my website after the “WebP discovery”.

If you’ve read my blog about my Japan trip in 2020, you must have seen this already.

This picture is another kiss-WebP.

Initially, this was just a simple photograph that my girlfriend’s sister took. I like the “art” that went with it. Therefore I added my touch of creativity and turned it into this. I incorporated many pictures and then put them altogether in the mobile phone’s screen. I used Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro to create the animation.

This is the latest addition. It’s a stop motion photography-ish.

Wanna see more of the animated images that I made? View my gallery.