WebP & AVIF Product Images
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Slow, heavy product images hurt page speed and Core Web Vitals, yet Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source block modern image formats by default – the admin refuses WebP and AVIF uploads, and the storefront serves only legacy JPEG/PNG. A fashion retailer with 4 000 product photos cannot switch to WebP at all without patching core. WebRamos Modern Images closes that gap so your catalogue can use modern formats that are typically 25 – 50 % smaller than an equivalent JPEG.
The extension does two things. First, it removes the hard-coded format
allow-lists across the admin, so your team can upload .webp and .avif to
product images, the Media Gallery, swatches, Page Builder, the CMS image
manager, theme logos, and customer uploads. Second, it lets Magento resize and
deliver those modern files as ordinary images through its own ImageMagick image
adapter – served as a plain <img> tag, with no <picture> markup and no
JavaScript. Because nothing is injected into the theme, the result behaves
identically on Luma and Hyvä.
A built-in command-line tool migrates an existing catalogue: it converts your current JPEG/PNG product images to WebP (or AVIF) and rewrites the catalogue references in a single, idempotent pass, with a dry-run preview and a safety confirmation. An admin diagnostics panel reports which converters are available and warns when the server's image adapter is not configured for ImageMagick, so you always know the environment is ready.
Modern Images is a rule-based, deterministic, on-premise extension. It uses no external services, sends no data off-site, adds no database tables and no storefront scripts. Every setting is scoped per store view, so you can roll modern formats out on one store at a time.
Key Features
- Accept WebP and AVIF uploads across the entire admin (product images, Media Gallery, swatches, Page Builder, CMS/WYSIWYG, theme logos, customer uploads)
- Native serving as a plain `<img>` – no `<picture>` element, no JavaScript
- Theme-independent: identical behaviour on Luma and Hyvä
- One-command catalogue migration (existing JPEG/PNG → WebP/AVIF + reference rewrite) with dry-run preview and idempotent re-runs
- Optional automatic conversion on product-image upload
- Per-store configuration of formats, encoder quality, and converter
- Multiple converter backends (cwebp, Imagick, GD) with automatic selection
- Built-in preflight diagnostics with an image-adapter warning
- Path exclusion via regular expressions
- No database tables, no storefront JavaScript
Versions
- Added: the support banner on the extension's configuration pane now carries a
second line naming the extension and its installed version
(
WebRamos_ModernImages+ version) – the exact string to paste into a support ticket. Both values are read from the installation, never written down; if the version cannot be determined, the name is shown alone. - Fixed: a malformed
composer.jsonin any other installed module no longer breaks the rendering of this extension's configuration page – the version lookup falls back to the name instead of letting the error escape into the form. No setting, schema or CLI output changes.
FAQ
Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source decide which image types the admin will accept, and WebP and AVIF are not on the list – still not, in 2.4.9. A merchant whose source images are already in a modern format has to convert them to JPEG to upload them, into a store that may then convert them back on the way out.
This extension makes the formats ordinary uploads across the whole admin panel,
and serves them exactly as uploaded, from a plain <img> tag. The conversion
step leaves the workflow, and the files a browser downloads are a fraction of
the size a JPEG would have been.
- Your source images are already WebP or AVIF. A modern camera or design pipeline produces them, and every upload currently costs a conversion.
- You want smaller images without touching the theme. Serving is a plain
<img>; there is no<picture>element to add, nosrcsetto maintain and no storefront JavaScript. - You run Luma and Hyvä side by side. Behaviour is identical on both, because no theme markup is involved at any point.
- You have a catalogue of JPEG and PNG to move once. One command converts it and rewrites the references, with a dry run first and safe re-runs.
- Your server has ImageMagick with WebP and AVIF support. This is a prerequisite, not a nicety – see the last question.
- What you actually want is conversion on output. If your images are JPEG and will stay JPEG, and you want the store to serve WebP copies to browsers that accept them, buy a conversion extension. Several on the Adobe Commerce Marketplace do that well, from about USD 39, and two of them carry 5.0 ratings. This extension is about what the platform accepts, not about converting what it already has.
- You need a converted-image cache, Varnish integration or a
<picture>fallback for very old browsers. Those belong to the conversion products. - You are looking for a page-speed suite. Lazy loading, critical CSS, JS bundling and CDN delivery are all outside this extension.
- Your host gives you GD and nothing else. Native serving needs ImageMagick compiled with WebP and AVIF support. Without it the extension will tell you so, and it will not work around it.
- Accepts WebP and AVIF across the whole admin – product images, the media gallery, swatches, Page Builder, CMS and the WYSIWYG editor, theme logos and customer uploads. Not one screen: all of them.
- Serves them natively, as a plain
<img>. No<picture>element, nosrcsetrewriting, no storefront JavaScript, no theme changes. - Behaves identically on Luma and Hyvä, because there is no theme markup in the path.
- Migrates an existing catalogue with one command – converts JPEG and PNG and rewrites the references that point at them, with a dry-run preview, and idempotent so a second run is a no-op rather than a second conversion.
- Converts on upload, optionally. Off by default; product images are converted as they are added when you switch it on.
- Is configured per store view: WebP and AVIF switched separately, an
encoder quality for each, a converter backend pinned to
cwebp, ImageMagick or GD or left on automatic selection, and path exclusion by regular expression. - Checks the server before you trust it. A preflight diagnostic reports whether the host can encode and serve these formats and warns when Magento's image adapter is set to GD, which silently defeats native serving.
- Adds no database tables and no storefront JavaScript, and calls no external service.
- It does not work on GD alone. Native serving requires ImageMagick built with WebP and AVIF support, and Magento's own image adapter must be set to ImageMagick – with GD selected, the platform rejects the formats server-side whatever this extension is configured to do. The diagnostic command reports both conditions, and this is the single most common reason an installation does not behave as expected.
- It does not cache converted images or integrate with Varnish. There is no dedicated image cache; that is a conversion product's job.
- It does not emit a
<picture>fallback. A browser that cannot display AVIF gets no substitute, which is a deliberate trade for having no theme markup and no JavaScript. Current browser support is broad, but it is not universal, and this is the assumption to check against your own analytics. - It does not resize, crop, or generate responsive variants, and it is not a lazy-loader, a CDN or a page-speed suite.
- It does not convert on the fly at request time. Conversion happens on upload or through the migration command, never inside a page render.
- It cannot undo a migration. The command rewrites references; the dry run is there so the decision is made before, not after.
- It sends nothing anywhere. No external service, no telemetry, no account. That is a limit as much as a feature: there is no vendor-side optimisation pass, and the quality you get is the quality your own encoder produces.