My Photography Portfolio Was Killing My Hosting Bill

I run a photography portfolio — around 200 images. For years I uploaded full JPGs straight from Lightroom, because I wanted the best possible quality online. Then I looked at my bandwidth usage and saw I was consistently hitting my hosting plan's limit. My average image was 900KB. A visitor loading my gallery page was downloading 15–20MB just to see thumbnails. I converted every image to WebP and the average dropped to 380KB — less than half. The hosting plan went down a tier. Page load on mobile went from "slow" to "fine." The photos looked identical.

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Plomz JPG to WebP converter with a batch of photography portfolio images loaded — showing average size reduction — 24 photography portfolio JPGs converted to WebP — average file size dropped from 880KB to 365KB per image.

The types of images where WebP delivers the biggest gains

Landscape and nature photography: Sky gradients, foliage, water — these compress beautifully in WebP. I've seen 40–50% size reductions on my landscape shots at quality I can't distinguish.
Portrait photography: Skin tones and hair compress well. The gains are slightly smaller than landscapes but still meaningful at scale.
Product photos on white backgrounds: Consistent results here — typically 30–40% smaller. The clean background helps the encoder focus on the product.
Hero and banner images: These are the highest-impact images to convert because they're the largest files on the page and they're on the critical load path.

One thing to know about converting an existing JPG

When I convert a JPG to WebP, I'm re-encoding a file that was already lossy-compressed. The WebP encoder works with the pixels the JPG decoder produced — including any artifacts already baked in. It doesn't add new visible damage, but it doesn't remove the old artifacts either.

For my own photos from Lightroom, this isn't an issue — I export clean JPGs at quality 90 and then convert. For JPGs that have been through multiple rounds of editing and re-saving, the starting quality matters. If the JPG looks clean, the WebP will look clean. If it was already degraded, WebP just stores that degradation more efficiently.

When JPG is still the right format

WebP is my default for web delivery, but not everywhere:

Email attachments: Most email clients don't support WebP. I send JPG for anything going by email.
Print and print labs: Print services expect JPG or TIFF. WebP has no place in print workflows.
Clients who ask for JPG: Some clients have systems that only accept JPG uploads. I keep the JPG master and deliver WebP separately for web use.

Files processed and deleted automatically

Uploads arrive over HTTPS and are processed in temporary storage. Files are deleted the moment the conversion finishes. No account needed, no retention.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much smaller will my WebP files be?

For photographic JPGs, typically 25–45% smaller at comparable visual quality. Results vary based on image content and the quality of the original JPG.

Does converting JPG to WebP make the image look worse?

At high quality settings, most people can't tell the difference at normal viewing sizes. Since JPG is already lossy, you're trading one approximation for a more efficiently compressed one.