Webp in gmail / transparency issues

[Etienne Loiseau]

Hi there,

It's been a while now since i'm struggling with an issue over webp images embbeded in mails sent to gmail users.

Concret case being better than any word :    

Those two pictos are fully transparent and display well in every other webmail or mail client, but here, for some reasons, they won't and will display that black background I can't figure out how to get rid of...

I really don't know what I'm missing there, if someone can enlighten me, that'd be really appreciated.

Thanks in adavance

[Yannis Guyon]

Thanks for your report.

This is a known missing feature from GMail back end. It converts WebP images into JPEG ones for compatibility purposes. Assuming you attached a WebP Twitter logo, it is now displayed as a JPEG (even if its extension is .webp).

I bumped the internal thread for this issue.

The current workaround is to use PNG or GIF for images that require translucency or animation. An alternative for alpha is to bake the background color into the images (but this may not always be possible or work well with night mode).

[Loiseau2nuit]

Hi Yannis, and thanks for this feedback. I've been digging on it for months now, unable to find the reason why.

Quite funny, actually, that the one conglomerate pushing webp over the world, is also the one not able to deal with it correctly in it's own tools 😂

As we say in french : "Les cordonniers sont toujours les plus mal chaussés" ("Shoemakers are always the worst shod" even if I'm not sure it makes any sense in english 😅)

Anyway, thanks for bumping that internal thread and I hope a solution will be found soon, as in my organisation, we've decreased by nearly a half the weight of the data, dealt with daily by our mail servers just by replacing PNGs with WebPs in our enterprise signatures (which was one of the solutions we've been asked for, to meet performances and digital sobriety challenges). It would be sad to go back to PNGs now.

Let's wait and see.

Thanks again

[Amit Aits]

Reporting exact the same issue.

In our case images are fetched from the CDN which costs 5x if PNG format is used 😏

Kindly fix this.

Regards.

[David Strom]

This is pretty ridiculous! I go through so much effort to make our emails gmail darkmode compatible -- then stakeholders complain the PNGs are too big. Finally I say... the problem is that GMAIL is the only email client that does not support webp

What irony! 

[Akash Arora]

Despite being the ones to create and market it! What a shame.

I assume they convert to jpg for some kind of security reasons or common display across all devices -- but with Android on 14 now, we gotta let some devices go. Anyways I'm sure a 4-5 year old phone can easily run webps.

Viruses? Preventing a ping from the user's IP? I can't imagine why else they'd convert to JPG. It really sucks.

[Kunal Soni]

How bout sending the image base64 in mail? Will that work?

[David Strom]

For a small image that can be a good idea getting around Apple privacy features. 

However generally not recommended better to host the image on a bucket with a CDN. 

Only use png and jpg

Best, 

David Strom 

415-702-5503

On Aug 4, 2024, at 4:52 AM, Kunal Soni <sone...@gmail.com> wrote:

How bout sending the image base64 in mail? Will that work?

[Kunal Soni]

Yes I am thinking, small here is referring to thumbnail product images for a ecommerce, not the large posters.

Best,

Kunal Soni

[David Strom]

Just remember to test on all platforms. And be careful about your byte count. Don't be surprised if clients get angry with oversized photos. 

Best, 

David Strom 

415-702-5503

On Aug 4, 2024, at 9:35 AM, Kunal Soni <sone...@gmail.com> wrote:



[Kunal Soni]

what is the alternative? Our website has all images in webp, and gmail conversion messes up the backgrounds. What is the best approach here?

Best, 

Kunal Soni

[David Strom]

Ummm if it were me… i would build a utility to monitor the assets folder and convert all images to 8bit png copy all jpg images and apply resolution cap on everything to 1400 px wide. Then those assets would live on a bucket with the same folder structure as the web assets.

These would be called lifecycleassets.website.com/image location

In this same bucket i would maintain a folder called 2024/month/asset

And in there i would keep all my custom assets.

David Strom
Providing solutions for all aspects of your enterprise, including Marketing Automation, Software Development, and Integration Design. 

Phone: (209) 259-3989

Calendar:Book a Strategy Session!

[Kunal Soni]

damn looks like a lot of dual work. but got it, thank you so much.

Best,

Kunal Soni

[David Strom]

Or… create a CDN route which links to a script. That script finds the asset on your website and converts it into an email optimized asset, then caches it on the CDN. 

David Strom
Providing solutions for all aspects of your enterprise, including Marketing Automation, Software Development, and Integration Design. 

Phone: (209) 259-3989

Calendar:Book a Strategy Session!

[Kunal Soni]

sir u have been cooking on diff levels. anyway, I get your point. seems like a fun build.

best,

kunal soni

[Kunal Soni]

i’m sure it has something do with their Google workspace data where they have significant number of clients having devices not supporting webp

best,

kunal soni

On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 7:42 PM David Strom <da...@draglabs.com> wrote:

Its such an irony that google made webp and outlook supports it but google mail does not.

David Strom
Providing solutions for all aspects of your enterprise, including Marketing Automation, Software Development, and Integration Design. 

Phone: (209) 259-3989

Calendar:Book a Strategy Session!

On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 7:29 AM Kunal Soni <sone...@gmail.com> wrote:

outlook is able to display webp correctly too?

best,

kunal soni

On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 5:57 PM Gregor W. Sky <grego...@gmail.com> wrote:

I really wonder, this topic is unsolved since over one year and actually, we should not try to find a workaround like converting back to png or jpg, but instead, Google has to fix Gmail! I've tested our newsletters with webp images in other webmailers and email clients and all are able to display the webp images with transparent background correctly.

We have to report this to Google as an error in Gmail.

[Gregor W. Sky]

I really wonder, this topic is unsolved since over one year and actually, we should not try to find a workaround like converting back to png or jpg, but instead, Google has to fix Gmail! I've tested our newsletters with webp images in other webmailers and email clients and all are able to display the webp images with transparent background correctly.

We have to report this to Google as an error in Gmail.

On Monday 5 August 2024 at 10:29:35 UTC+2 Kunal Soni wrote:

[Kunal Soni]

outlook is able to display webp correctly too?

best,

kunal soni

On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 5:57 PM Gregor W. Sky <grego...@gmail.com> wrote:

[David Strom]

Its such an irony that google made webp and outlook supports it but google mail does not.

David Strom
Providing solutions for all aspects of your enterprise, including Marketing Automation, Software Development, and Integration Design. 

Phone: (209) 259-3989

Calendar:Book a Strategy Session!

[Efren Bravo]

December 2024 and the problem persists.

regards.