webp-convert

Convert PNG and JPG images into WEBP images automatically.

Installation

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/fredlarkins/webp-convert.git

Activate your virtual environment (optional):

cd webp-convert
python3 -m venv venv

Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

'''

Usage

Using the script is as simple as:

python converter.py

Running this command will:

• Look for .png, .jpg and .jpeg images in the present working directory;
• Convert them into .webp images;
• Save them in the same working directory with the same filename (plus the .webp extension)

Command-line arguments

The script takes a few command-line arguments to make it a little more flexible.

-s, --source

The directory containing the images to be converted - i.e. the source. For instance:

python converter.py -s holiday-snaps

Would convert all images in the holiday-snaps folder, saving them in the present working directory.

-d, --destination

A directory in which to save the converted images - i.e. the destination.

Note: if this directory does not exist, the script will ask you to confirm whether you'd like to create it before proceeding. I found this helped escape instances where I mis-typed the destination.

For instance:

python converter.py -s holiday-snaps -d optimised-holiday-snaps

Would convert all images in holiday-snaps and save them in optimised-holiday-snaps.

-w, --width or -g, --height

The width or height in px of the converted images.

Note: you can use either the -w or the -g flag, but not both.

The images will be resized to be a maximum of width/height in px. If the original image is smaller than the width/height supplied, it will be left untouched (i.e. not scaled up).

The aspect ratio of the image will be preserved: as such, only one of these two flags can be supplied. For instance:

python converter.py -s holiday-snaps -d optimised-holiday-snaps -w 1000

Would convert all images in holiday-snaps, save them to optimised-holiday-snaps and resize them to be a maximum width of 1000px.

Applications

Like most of the Python scripts I write (😅), I'll be running this as a Cron Job. In my case, it'll be on my blog's server to optimise my images. That way, I don't have to worry about manually converting them every time I write an article.

Otherwise, you could use it as a one-off to batch convert a load of images. The terminal will display a progress bar so you can keep track of how long it'll take to complete (handy if you're converting hundreds of images).

$ python converter.py -s holiday-snaps -d optimised-holiday-snaps -w 1000

The directory "optimised-holiday-snaps" does not exist. Would you like to create it? (Y/n) > y

Converting images...
100%|██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 25/25 [00:10<00:00,  2.30it/s]

Converted 25 images to WEBP, saving 14.2 MB - a 93% decrease.