Bahaa ZidanSharp: High Performance Image Conversion & Compression in NodeJS
Turns out the best way to make an image compression library in JavaScript is to write it in C.
Sharp is just that. It doesn't just handle compression or format conversion. The official docs state the use cases clearly:
The typical use case for this high speed Node-API module is to convert large images in common formats to smaller, web-friendly JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF and AVIF images of varying dimensions.
It can be used with all JavaScript runtimes that provide support for Node-API v9, including Node.js >= 18.17.0, Deno and Bun.
Resizing an image is typically 4x-5x faster than using the quickest ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick settings due to its use of libvips.
Colour spaces, embedded ICC profiles and alpha transparency channels are all handled correctly. Lanczos resampling ensures quality is not sacrificed for speed.
As well as image resizing, operations such as rotation, extraction, compositing and gamma correction are available.
Here's how easy it is to convert image format from jpg images to webp:
import sharp from 'sharp';
await sharp(inputPath).webp({ quality: 50 }).toFile(webpPath);That's it. Super straight forward. I've used this library in many contexts. Whether it's compressing user generated images to store them into an S3 bucket or writing a script to compress and resize the images of this blog, Sharp handles it all like a champ. It really is an amazing library and I implore you to read the docs.