{"version":"2.1.295","anchor":"webp-image-output-path","canonical_anchor":"webp-image-output-path","heading":"Images can be sent as smaller WebP files, and very costly images are refused","tier":"soon","area":"Images","scope":"individual","heads_up":false,"url":"https:\/\/changelogs.core-directive.com\/v\/2.1.295\/e\/webp-image-output-path","release_url":"https:\/\/changelogs.core-directive.com\/v\/2.1.295","markdown":"### Images can be sent as smaller WebP files, and very costly images are refused\n\nClaude Code can re-encode images as WebP when that is smaller, and now refuses images that are too costly to decode\n\n**What**\n\nWhen Claude Code prepares an image to send to the model, it can now save it in the WebP image format instead of its original format, if WebP is smaller. There are three settings:\n\n- off: images keep their usual format\n\n- lossless: WebP that keeps every pixel exactly\n\n- all: lossy WebP too, which drops some detail to save more space\n\nThe default is off unless it is switched on remotely. It also stays off when the runtime Claude Code is running on lacks the image support it needs. Images in unusual formats are converted to WebP rather than PNG, and resized PNGs can come back as WebP. In one place, image processing explicitly keeps WebP off.\n\nSeparately, decoding an image now has limits on its size in pixels and on how much work it takes. An image over those limits fails with \"Image is too costly to decode\".\n\n**Why**\n\nSmaller image files can mean fewer bytes sent and fewer tokens used for images. The decoding limits mean a very large or unusual image can now be refused instead of processed.\n\n- Flag `tengu_parsed_eagle`: Not enough to say (read for one account on one subscription tier against v2.1.295; this account: no value returned, anonymous baseline: no value returned, compiled default: not a boolean we can read) These values were read against a different version of Claude Code, so treat them as the nearest reading available instead of one taken on this release.\n- Area: Images\n- Tier: Nothing to try yet\n- Useful: 3\/5\n- Signal: 3\/5\n- Scope: individual\n- Heads-up: no\n- Present in the build but not switched on"}