How to convert JPG to WebP: the Direto Notícias case study

The problem: good photos, slow pages

Converting JPG to WebP is the cheapest change a site can make to load faster. On a news site almost every story comes with a photo, and almost every photo arrives from the camera or the wire service as a JPG, far heavier than the screen needs. Added up, those images are what slows a page down the most, especially on phones. A reader who waits too long closes the tab; and Google measures that slowness when deciding who shows up first.

What Direto Notícias did

Direto Notícias, a news portal from Espírito Santo, Brazil, started converting its photos from JPG to WebP before publishing, using the AtlasDocs Change image format tool. The flow is simple: the team uploads the day's photos, picks WebP under "Output format", clicks "Convert N images" and posts the converted files on the site. Nothing is installed and nothing is sent to a third-party server: the conversion happens in the newsroom's own browser. The same tool converts between PNG, JPG, WebP and GIF; see how to convert an image format.

• Images up to 70% smaller than the original JPG, looking the same on screen.
• Lighter pages and faster loading for the audience, especially on mobile.
• Zero change to the routine: photos keep coming in the same way, just as WebP.
• Privacy preserved: the photos never leave the computer during conversion.

Why WebP weighs so much less than JPG

WebP is an image format Google created for the web. It stores the same photo with more efficient compression: according to the official WebP page, a WebP image is usually 25% to 34% smaller than a JPG of equivalent quality. On photos that arrived far too heavy from the source, the savings can be much bigger, like the up-to-70% the portal measured. Every current browser opens WebP, so readers notice no difference other than speed.

How to convert JPG to WebP in AtlasDocs

1. Open the Change image format tool and upload the JPG photos (you can upload several at once; PNG, WebP and GIF go in too).
2. Under "Output format", switch from "PNG", the default, to "WebP".
3. Click "Convert and download" (with several photos, "Convert 12 images"). Each photo downloads separately, with the same name and the .webp extension.
4. Upload the .webp files to your site in place of the JPGs.

The conversion writes the WebP at 92% quality, which on screen is indistinguishable from the original. And there's a welcome side effect for a newsroom: because the image is redrawn from scratch, the hidden data in the JPG (GPS location, phone model, date) doesn't travel into the WebP.

Still heavy? Compress it

A photo from a professional camera can stay large even as WebP. In that case run the file through the Compress image tool: it re-encodes JPG and WebP at 70% quality, keeps the format, shows the result for each file ("photo.jpg: A → B (−X%)") and never returns a file larger than the original; if there's no gain, the file's line says "did not shrink (original kept)". The file comes out with the suffix -compressed. Since it's a second lossy pass, open the result and check it before publishing. See how to reduce image file size in one click.

Photos that stay JPG: clean the hidden data

Not every photo goes through conversion: some arrive ready from agencies, others are already in the archive. A phone photo stores where it was taken, on which device and when, and that travels along when the image is published. The Clean image data tool strips all of it from JPG and PNG with one click, without recompressing, and confirms: "Done! We removed the hidden data, including the location."

Tips for a faster news site

• Convert in batches: upload every photo for the story at once; each one downloads ready, with the same name.
• Convert before publishing: swapping images later is more work than converting on the way in.
• Keep the original JPG in a separate folder in case you need to re-edit the photo later.
• An animated GIF becomes a single frame when converted; if the animation matters, compress the GIF instead of converting it.
• Measure before and after: compare file sizes and the load time of a photo-heavy article.

The JPG-to-WebP conversion happens entirely in your browser: your photos stay on your own device and are never uploaded to any server. That's exactly what let the portal adopt the workflow without changing anything about newsroom security.

Transparency: WebP and PNG keep a transparent background; JPG doesn't. If you convert a PNG logo to JPG, the background turns white. For logos, prefer WebP.