WebP is Google's image format designed specifically for the web. Released in 2010, it provides both lossy and lossless compression in a single format. WebP files are typically 25-35% smaller than equivalent JPGs and 26% smaller than equivalent PNGs at the same visual quality. The format supports transparency, animation, and metadata. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari all support WebP natively, making it the fastest-growing format on the web. When you right-click and save an image from a modern website, it often downloads as a WebP file. Social media platforms, news sites, and e-commerce stores increasingly serve images as WebP for faster page loads. Despite its web dominance, many desktop applications and legacy tools still do not recognize the .webp extension.

WebP to text conversion is necessary when you save images from websites that have adopted the format. News article screenshots, e-commerce product descriptions, online menu images, and recipe cards downloaded from the web frequently arrive as WebP files. If you save a product listing image from an online store, the text on packaging, labels, and descriptions is locked inside a WebP file. Browser-saved images from documentation sites, wikis, and knowledge bases often use WebP. Content researchers who archive web pages need to extract text from saved WebP images. Social media images downloaded through native apps typically arrive as JPG instead, while browser screenshots are usually PNG. Any image saved from Chrome's "Save image as" option on a modern website is likely WebP.

ImagText processes WebP images natively without format conversion overhead. The AI vision model handles both lossy and lossless WebP variants with equal accuracy. For lossy WebP, the AI reads through compression artifacts similar to JPG but with less degradation at equivalent file sizes. Lossless WebP images provide the same pixel-perfect clarity as PNG, yielding near-perfect extraction on clean text. The model correctly processes WebP images with transparency — text on transparent backgrounds extracts without issues. Web-optimized images often have moderate resolution since they are designed for screen display, but the AI compensates with contextual understanding of partially rendered characters. Even heavily compressed WebP thumbnails produce usable text extraction when the source text is reasonably sized.

WebP quality depends on how the website optimized the image. Sites that aggressively compress images for page speed may reduce text clarity. Images saved from high-quality sources like documentation sites and news outlets tend to have sufficient resolution for clean extraction. WebP files saved from social media may be more compressed. For best results, save the full-size image rather than a thumbnail — many websites serve different resolutions via srcset, and browsers default to the viewport-appropriate size. If text appears fuzzy in the saved image, try zooming in on the web page before saving. Lossless WebP files produce the best results since they preserve every pixel exactly. The 10 MB upload limit is rarely an issue with WebP since the format's compression keeps file sizes small.