What are the best cloud-based image processing services?

Question

22

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Considered

61

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Recs.

Mar 14, 2022

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

17 Options Considered

Best cloud-based image processing services	Price	Platforms	Technology
-- Uploadcare	-	-	-
-- Akamai	Paid	-	-
-- Kraken	Free / paid	-	-
-- Upload	-	-	-
-- Imgix	-	-	-

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Red

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score 12 · Answer 1

Uploadcare

Top Pro

Handles fast CDN transformations for you

Uploadcare doesn't require you to define cached transformations, and handles them quickly for you so you don't have to fiddle with configurations. See More

Top Con

Doesn't handle SVGs well

Top Pro

Open source API

Their APIs are open source on github so you can see the source and provide pull requests. See More

Top Pro

Clean and thoughtful client side API.

Uploadcare provides a client side widget and API, with well worded documentation that clearly explains how each part of the widget is implemented. The client side API also implements the jQuery promises interface for cleanly defining callbacks and updating with progress. With the client side API decoupled from the upload interface, you can much more easily create customized UI's that match the look and feel of your site. See More

See All

score 5 · Answer 2

Akamai

Top Pro

Large scale point of presence

Being one of the worlds largest CDNs, Akamai's large scale gives it a huge point of presence (PoP) to handle volumetric attacks. See More

Top Con

Expensive

Akami's services cost more than triple comparative packages from other security companies. At 13k a month for DDoS protection, there are many other choices out there that cost less for the same protection. See More

Top Pro

Deeply customizable rules

The Kona Site Defender rules are all customizable, with continuous updates from Akamai. This means you can see how they are protecting your site under the hood, and adjust them to your needs. See More

Top Con

Slower security rule propagation

Because of Akamai's large CDN structure, it can take some time for security rules to propagate, making it harder to adjust security responses on the fly. See More

Top Pro

Lots of dedicated bandwidth specifically for DDoS absorption

Through Prolexic's PLXedge, Akamai provides their customers with a total of 2.3 Tbps of dedicated DDoS absorption bandwidth. See More

Top Pro

Rules for rate limiting

Akamai provides tools for rate controlling traffic segments based on their request rate behavior. See More

Top Pro

Capped bursting fees

If a sudden attack sucks up a lot of bandwidth, the bandwidth costs are capped. See More

Top Pro

Application layer protection

Akamai utilizes a proprietary web application firewall in order to provide scalable protection against application layer attacks. See More

See All

score 7 · Answer 3

Kraken

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score 2 · Answer 4

Upload

Top Pro

Took a few seconds to setup

Upload.js installed into our web app in a few seconds. It's a lightweight library, so there's no UI elements. A "file input element" was already present on our page, and with Upload.js you set their helper method as the "onchange" attribute, and they take care of everything else from there. See More

Sameer Bushell's Experience

We needed to add file uploads (with image thumbnailing) to a web app, and didn't want to go through the effort of setting up S3 buckets or ImageMagick on our backend -- in the end we used Upload.js to handle the file uploads, and the Upload API to resize them on the URL. So cool. So much time saved 😅 See More

Top Pro

Image resizing & cropping

Used their AI image cropping for some projects (you don't define crop geometry yourself -- they detect which part to crop for you), and manual cropping for others (where the user wanted to set which part of the image to crop in the UI). We're currently saving all our images out to webp. See More

Top Pro

Very cost-effective

Time savings aside, it's very cost-effective. Entry tier for like $7pm worked well for several client projects. Only upgraded to the $35pm tier because a client wanted password-protected files -- other than that, the quotas / limits are very generous. See More

See All

score 4 · Answer 5

Imgix

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score 1 · Answer 6

G'MIC

Top Pro

Great variety of powerful effects

Nearly whatever effect you may think of. See More

RickZeeland's Experience

Full-featured open-source framework for digital image processing, See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, Web

Technology:C++

Top Pro

Free

See All

score 1 · Answer 7

Remove.bg

Top Pro

Free

Can be used for free, the output will be limited to 625x400 pixels however. See More

Top Con

Not always reliable

Only works well with some pictures, this is because the AI only recognizes people and some products. See More

RickZeeland's Experience

Remove.bg uses Artificial Intelligence to identify people in the picture and cut them out. See More

See All

score 2 · Answer 8

ImageEngine

Top Pro

60-80% reduction in image bandwidth

Joseph LoPresti's Experience

ImageEngine is an excellent solution for dynamic image optimization. No need to create multiple versions of each image to account for different breakpoints. ImageEngine does all that for you. See More

Specs

CDN:Yes

Client Hints support:Yes

HTTP2 Support:Yes

WebP support:Yes

See All Specs

Top Pro

Easy Integration

You can either prefix your image domains or CNAME like any normal CDN. No need to upload images like other processing solutions. See More

See All

Answer 9

JPEG Mini - Compressor

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score 2 · Answer 10

Pixboost

Top Pro

Straightforward Pricing Model

CromulentFaustitas's Experience

The team at Pixboost did a fantastic job of implementing their image optimisation service on our site, even going as far as building a custom HTML Snippet Generator for our content editors so that they could easily add responsive images anywhere on the website, optimising them for various user’s devices and screen sizes. See More

Top Pro

Included CDN

Top Pro

Libraries for modern web frameworks

Top Pro

Tools for content managers

Top Pro

Supporting Next Generation Formats

Top Pro

Responsive Images

See All

score 2 · Answer 11

Blitline

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score 1 · Answer 12

ImageResizer.io

Top Pro

Adult content moderation

Top Pro

Doesn't charge for number of transforms (only bandwidth and storage)

Top Pro

Can both upload images to ImageResizer.io and use both custom origins

Top Pro

Custom routing

Top Pro

Handles huge images

Top Pro

Super fast image transforms

Top Pro

Beautiful API

See All

score 1 · Answer 13

ImageKit.io

Top Pro

Only bandwidth based pricing - pay as you go

VigorousNyx's Experience

ImageKit automates image resizing & optimization on all platforms. Intelligent real-time image optimization, resizing, cropping and super fast delivery using global CDN. It takes just 5 minutes to connect with all leading platforms. You can easily integrate ImageKit into existing infrastructure. See More

Specs

CDN:Yes

Client Hints support:Yes

WebP support:Yes. Automatic

HTTP2 Support:Yes

See All Specs

See All

Answer 14

AtomJPEG

Add Video or Image

Answer 15

Firesize

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Answer 16

Cloudinary

Top Con

Client API is deeply coupled with jQuery UI.

score 1 · Answer 17

17 Options Considered

My Recommendation for Uploadcare

My Recommendation for Uploadcare

Handles fast CDN transformations for you

Doesn't handle SVGs well

Open source API

Clean and thoughtful client side API.

My Recommendation for Akamai

My Recommendation for Akamai

Large scale point of presence

Expensive

Deeply customizable rules

Slower security rule propagation

Lots of dedicated bandwidth specifically for DDoS absorption

Rules for rate limiting

Capped bursting fees

Application layer protection

My Recommendation for Kraken

My Recommendation for Kraken

My Recommendation for Upload

My Recommendation for Upload

Took a few seconds to setup

Image resizing & cropping

Very cost-effective

My Recommendation for Imgix

My Recommendation for Imgix

My Recommendation for G'MIC

My Recommendation for G'MIC

Great variety of powerful effects

Free

My Recommendation for Remove.bg

My Recommendation for Remove.bg

Free

Not always reliable

My Recommendation for ImageEngine

My Recommendation for ImageEngine

60-80% reduction in image bandwidth

Easy Integration

My Recommendation for Red

My Recommendation for Red

My Recommendation for JPEG Mini - Compressor

My Recommendation for JPEG Mini - Compressor

My Recommendation for Pixboost

My Recommendation for Pixboost

Straightforward Pricing Model

Included CDN

Libraries for modern web frameworks

Tools for content managers

Supporting Next Generation Formats

Responsive Images

My Recommendation for Blitline

My Recommendation for Blitline

My Recommendation for ImageResizer.io

My Recommendation for ImageResizer.io

Adult content moderation

Doesn't charge for number of transforms (only bandwidth and storage)

Can both upload images to ImageResizer.io and use both custom origins

Custom routing

Handles huge images

Super fast image transforms

Beautiful API

My Recommendation for ImageKit.io

My Recommendation for ImageKit.io

Only bandwidth based pricing - pay as you go

My Recommendation for AtomJPEG

My Recommendation for AtomJPEG

My Recommendation for Firesize

My Recommendation for Firesize

My Recommendation for Cloudinary

My Recommendation for Cloudinary

Client API is deeply coupled with jQuery UI.

Don't see your favorite option? Add it.

My Recommendation for Retoucher Online

My Recommendation for Retoucher Online

My Recommendation for Erase.bg

My Recommendation for Erase.bg

My Recommendation for Cloudimage

My Recommendation for Cloudimage

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