Show HN: WebPtoPNG – I built a WebP to PNG tool, everything runs in the browser(webptopng.cc)
22 pointsby akseli_ukkonena month ago7 comments
  • brevea month ago
    > I built WebPtoPNG after getting frustrated with converters that throttle uploads or phone data

    Why would you want to do it in a browser anyway? Just run it local. There are many open source image editors and converters to choose from.

    ImageMagick is one: https://imagemagick.org/

    GIMP is another: https://www.gimp.org/

    Krita is another: https://krita.org/en/

    • xeonmca month ago
      People don't want to install/download/vet reputation of local apps for spontaneous, one-off tasks.
      • brevea month ago
        But people will vet a website that has the potential to change every day? Each time you visit the site the behaviour could be different. Vetting the site every time you use it would be profoundly tedious.

        When you install an application you can vet the version you want to use, keep the installer so you can always reinstall the same version, and it only changes when you change it. That's much better control.

        Luckily, all of the image editors I listed are well known and trustworthy. They're good tools. You're much better off learning them and making full use of their capability than using some limited web based image converter.

        • bcyea month ago
          You only need to vet the website if you care about the privacy of the picture, and a website is run in a reliably sandboxed environment, whereas local tools run with much more elevated permissions.
      • baobuna month ago
        50/50 you have either ImageMagick or ffmpeg installed already.
        • a month ago
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    • pwdisswordfishya month ago
      Although I can't speak for everyone, my browser runs locally.
    • zipping1549a month ago
      Why use GUI at all? ffmpeg does it one-liner, a very long one.
      • RealStickman_a month ago
        Imagemagick also does it in the terminal. Chances are about as good as ffmpeg that you have it installed already
  • Evidloa month ago
    Some ideas for improvements:

    - Can you support more formats besides Webp and PNG?

    - Too much text on the interface - This reads more like a landing page for a startup than a SPA tool. Compare to e.g. [0]

    [0]: https://dinoosauro.github.io/image-converter/

    • xeonmca month ago
      Also, the aesthetic design is too "professional" and therefore not trustworthy.

      A trustworthy utility page should look like a CSS-less crappy HTML form.

  • Yash16a month ago
    Do you support integrations or provide open-source APIs? I want to integrate this with https://picxstudio.com and enable easy, browser-based downloads in multiple image formats.
  • DaleCurtisa month ago
    FWIW, you can do this with a few lines of JS in the browser using canvas.drawImage() from an img element followed by canvas.toBlob().
    • valadaptivea month ago
      Firefox now adds random noise to all canvas readback operations (getImageData, toDataURL, and toBlob).
      • DaleCurtisa month ago
        Ah, I didn't realize that always happened. I thought it was only if you did something that might have OS specific rendering characteristics (text-draws, etc).

        Maybe having an ImageEncoder API might be worthwhile after all then https://github.com/w3c/webcodecs/issues/204.

    • fouca month ago
      That would require a browser that supports WebP
  • gethlya month ago
    You can compile VIPS or similar library into WASM and avoid doing much work yourself.
  • fouca month ago
    Does this work on a browser that doesn't support WebP? That would be useful.
  • alexpham14a month ago
    I appreciate the meticulousness of the website.