Native WebP for Go

This is a native WebP encoder written entirely in Go, with no dependencies on libwebp or other external libraries. Designed for performance and efficiency, this encoder generates smaller files than the standard Go PNG encoder and is approximately 50% faster in execution.

Currently, the encoder supports only WebP lossless images (VP8L).

Benchmark

We conducted a quick benchmark to showcase file size reduction and encoding performance. Using an image from Google’s WebP Lossless and Alpha Gallery, we compared the results of our nativewebp encoder with the standard PNG decoder.

		PNG encoder	nativeWebP encoder	reduction
	file size	121kb	105kb	13% smaller
	encoding time	14170403 ns/op	5389776 ns/op	62% faster
	file size	48kb	38kb	21% smaller
	encoding time	10662832 ns/op	3760902 ns/op	65% faster
	file size	238	215	10% smaller
	encoding time	30952147 ns/op	16371708 ns/op	47% faster
	file size	53kb	43kb	19% smaller
	encoding time	4511737 ns/op	2181801 ns/op	52% faster
	file size	140kb	137kb	2% smaller
	encoding time	11045284 ns/op	4850678 ns/op	56% faster

_{image source: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/gallery2}

Installation

To install the nativewebp package, use the following command:

go get github.com/HugoSmits86/nativewebp

Usage

Here’s a simple example of how to encode an image:

file, err := os.Create(name)
if err != nil {
  log.Fatalf("Error creating file %s: %v", name, err)
}
defer file.Close()

err = nativewebp.Encode(file, img, nil)
if err != nil {
  log.Fatalf("Error encoding image to WebP: %v", err)
}