Comparing Cloud-Based Image Services For Developers 28
Nerval's Lobster writes "As Web applications grow in number and capability, storing large amounts of images can quickly become a problem. If you're a Web developer and need to store your client images, do you just keep them on the same server hosting your Website? What if you have several gigabytes worth of images that need to be processed in some way? Today, many developers are looking for an easy but cost-effective solution whereby images can be stored in the cloud and even processed automatically, thus taking a huge load off one's own servers, freeing up resources to focus on building applications. With that in mind, developer and editor Jeff Cogswell looks at a couple different cloud-based services for image storage and processing. At first glance, these services seem similar—but they're actually very different. He examines Cloudinary and Blitline, and encourages developers to take a look at ImageResizer, an open-source package that does a lot of what proprietary services do (you just need to install the software on your own servers). 'If you're not a programmer but a web designer or blogger, Blitline won't be of much use for you,' he writes. 'If you are a developer, both Cloudinary and Blitline work well.' What do you think?"
I get the idea, but is it really necessary? (Score:5, Informative)
As a veteraned web developer, I understand the idea... but is it really necessary?
The biggest issue I see is if the cloud service has a blip, or is simply slower than serving from your own servers.
In the past I've set up nginx strictly for serving static content (as it does it better than most) under a subdomain. This method is probably a good "in the middle" when it comes to serving the files. And, lets face it, storage is cheap. A couple of servers with a load balancer would be less prone to problems than running your own site on your own server(s) then subbing ouy the image hosting, storage and manipulation to some cloud services.
Unless you're dealing in resolutions higher than 20,000 px (X or Y) and they can manipulate the files and serve them faster I really don't see the need.