Month: February 2021

Image formats: WebP wins!

I recently imported a PDF image into the open source GNU Image Manipulation Program, also called The GIMP, edited it, and wanted to save the output to a format that I can use natively online.

The rendered image is 1458 by 1126.

Historically I would have chosen JPEG if it was a picture with lots of different colours, or a PNG if it had specific colours or any Alpha channel (transparency). In this case, I chose both of the above, and the new kid on the block, webp.

I chose a 60% quality setting for both the JPEG and WebP formats, and while I can’t tell the difference visually, I can on disk.

FormatBitsDPIFile size
PDF5,211,365
JPG3210076,178
PNG24412,813
WebP327232,768
File formats compared

The clear winner here is WebP on file size. Its some 56% smaller than JPEG, and 92% smaller than the PNG.

WebP was originally proposed in 2010, but libraries took a long time to be created, and then incorporated into browsers and native OS.

Today, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Brave and more support it. As I write this, the CanIUse.com site rates WebP at having 92.13% support.

Not all services you use support the upload of WebP format images at this stage, but that’s something up to the developer community to start to understand, implement and support. The time for this is looking like now!

AWS Re-certification

Time passes, and before you know it, three years have raced past and you get the following email:

Hello James Bromberger,

Your AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate is set to expire on Mar 13, 2021.

How to Recertify

To maintain your certification, you must pass the current version of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam. Check out our Recertification Policy for more information and details by certification level.

You have a 50% discount voucher in your AWS Certification Account under the “Benefits” section. If you haven’t done so already, you can apply this voucher to your exam fee to recertify or apply it to any future certification exam you wish to pursue by Mar 13, 2021. Sign in to aws.training/certification to get started.

If you have any questions, please refer to our FAQs or contact us.

Thank you,

AWS Training and Certification

My Solution Architect Professional certification also renews the corresponding subordinate Solution Architect Associate certification, which I first obtained on the 24th of February 2013 as one of the first in the world to sit this.

This reminder email came out exactly one month before expiry, so I have plenty of time to study and prepare.

With the global pandemic effectively shutting down much of the world, next week also marks 12 months since I was on a plane – the purpose for which was to attend an exam certification workshop to write the items (questions) for the… Solution Architect Professional certification, as a Subject Matter Expert. of course, there are many questions in the certification pool, and each candidate gets a random selection. including some questions that are non-scoring and are themselves being tested on candidates.

I often point my Modis AWS Cloud practice member colleagues at the Certification process training course, on the aws.training site. It gives you a great insight to the thoroughness of the process; it’s quite in depth. This should give confidence to candidates that strives to obtain these vendor certifications – they are discerning, and for good reason – to retain value.