Stop Pre-Generating Image Thumbnails in Laravel — Do It On-The-Fly Instead

Every Laravel project eventually hits the same wall: a designer asks for a new image size, and suddenly you're writing a migration, a queue job, and a Media Library conversion — just to serve a 400px thumbnail. There's a simpler way. Generate image variants on demand, cache the result permanently, and move on. That's exactly what [laravel-imagepresets](https://github.com/fomvasss/laravel-imagepresets) does. --- ## The Problem With Pre-Generated Thumbnails When you pre-generate image variants (the approach Spatie Media Library encourages by default), you pay upfront: - Storage costs for every variant of every image, even ones never viewed - Queue processing time on upload - Pain when design requirements change and you need to regenerate thousands of files - Complex seeding/migration logic for existing images On-the-fly processing flips this: you process an image **the first time it's requested**, cache the result, and never touch it again. The tradeoff is a slightly slower first request — which is usually invisible to users. --- ## What Is laravel-imagepresets? It's a Laravel package built on [League/Glide](https://glide.thephpleague.com/) that gives you: - A single `/imagepreset` route that handles all image transformations - Automatic caching to any Laravel filesystem disk (local, S3, GCS, FTP) - A clean API — helper function, Facade, and Blade directive - Named presets so you define sizes once and reuse them everywhere - Production-ready security: SSRF protection, allowlists, signed URLs, SVG sanitization --- ## Installation ```bash composer require fomvasss/laravel-imagepresets php artisan vendor:publish --tag=imagepresets-config ``` The service provider is auto-discovered. No manual registration needed. --- ## Your First Image URL ```php // Resize to 800px wide, convert to WebP $url = imagepreset_url('storage/images/photo.jpg', ['w' => 800, 'fm' => 'webp']); // → https://example.com/imagepreset?fm=webp&src=storage%2Fimages%2Fphoto.jpg&w=800 ``` On the first hit, Glide resizes and converts the image, stores it on your configured disk, and returns it with a one-year `Cache-Control` header. The next request? Pure cache — Laravel never runs. --- ## Named Presets: Define Once, Use Everywhere Hardcoding `['w' => 300, 'h' => 200, 'fm' => 'webp', 'fit' => 'crop']` everywhere is a maintenance headache. Named presets solve this. In `config/imagepresets.php`: ```php 'presets' => [ 'thumb' => ['w' => 300, 'h' => 200, 'fm' => 'webp', 'fit' => 'crop'], 'hero' => ['w' => 1200, 'fm' => 'webp', 'q' => 85], 'avatar' => ['w' => 96, 'h' => 96, 'fm' => 'webp', 'fit' => 'crop'], 'og_banner' => ['w' => 1300, 'h' => 650, 'fit' => 'fill-max', 'fm' => 'jpg', 'bg' => 'ffffff'], ], ``` Then in your code: ```php // String shorthand $url = imagepreset_url('photo.jpg', 'thumb'); // Facade Imagepreset::url('photo.jpg', 'hero'); ``` ```blade {{-- Blade directive --}} <img src="@imagepreset('photo.jpg', 'thumb')" alt="Thumbnail"> ``` Need to override one param? Pass it alongside the preset name: ```php // Use thumb preset but output JPG instead of WebP $url = imagepreset_url('photo.jpg', ['preset' => 'thumb', 'fm' => 'jpg']); ``` --- ## Fit Methods Explained The `fit` parameter controls how the image fills the target dimensions. Choosing the wrong one is a common source of stretched or oddly-cropped images. | Fit | Use when... | |-----|-------------| | `crop` | You need exact pixel dimensions (cards, avatars). Edges may be trimmed. | | `contain` | The full image must be visible. No fill — transparent space is left. | | `fill` | Full image visible, remaining canvas filled with `bg` color. May upscale. | | `fill-max` | Like `fill` but never upscales. Great for OG images and social banners. | | `max` | Like `contain` but never upscales beyond original size. | | `stretch` | Forces exact dimensions ignoring aspect ratio. Rarely a good idea. | For OG images, `fill-max` is your friend: ```php $url = imagepreset_url('post-image.jpg', [ 'w' => 1300, 'h' => 650, 'fit' => 'fill-max', 'fm' => 'jpg', 'bg' => 'ffffff', ]); ``` --- ## S3 / Remote Disk Support Just set the disk in your `.env`: ```env IMAGEPRESET_DISK=s3 IMAGEPRESET_PATH=imagepresets ``` The package detects remote disks automatically. Glide processes the image locally, uploads the result to S3 via Flysystem, deletes the local temp file, and streams the response directly from S3. No extra code needed. --- ## Security Out of the Box Open image-resizing endpoints are a common attack surface. The package handles the main threats: **Allowlists** prevent arbitrary dimensions from being requested: ```php 'allowed_widths' => [100, 200, 400, 800, 1200], 'allowed_heights' => [100, 200, 400, 600], 'allowed_formats' => ['webp', 'jpg', 'png'], ``` **SSRF protection** blocks remote image sources that point to private IPs or localhost. **Image bomb protection** rejects files that exceed `max_image_pixels` (default: 150 Mpx). **Signed URLs** (optional) make it impossible to tamper with parameters: ```env IMAGEPRESET_SIGNED_URL=true ``` Once enabled, `imagepreset_url()` automatically generates HMAC-signed URLs. Changing any parameter returns 403. --- ## Race Condition Protection What happens when 50 users simultaneously request the same uncached image? Without protection, you'd process the same image 50 times. The package uses `Cache::lock()` to ensure only one process generates each variant. Set `CACHE_DRIVER=redis` for this to work correctly across multiple servers. --- ## Audit Log: Discover What Your Frontend Actually Needs Before locking down allowlists in production, you can enable audit logging in development to see exactly which params your frontend requests: ```env IMAGEPRESET_AUDIT_LOG=true ``` Then extract unique values from your logs: ```bash grep -oh '"w":[0-9]*' storage/logs/*.log | sort -u ``` Use the findings to populate your allowlists before deploying. --- ## CDN and Nginx Caching Every response ships with: ```http Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, s-maxage=31536000, immutable ETag: "<hash>" ``` This makes it trivial to cache at the edge. The README includes ready-to-use configs for Nginx proxy cache and Cloudflare Cache Rules. To verify your cache is working: ```bash # Run twice — first should be MISS, second HIT curl -s -o /dev/null -D - "https://example.com/imagepreset?src=photo.jpg&w=800&fm=webp" ``` --- ## Clearing the Cache ```bash # Clear all cached presets php artisan imagepresets:clear # Clear a specific remote disk php artisan imagepresets:clear --disk=s3 --path=imagepresets ``` --- ## Requirements | Dependency | Version | |---|---| | PHP | ^8.1 | | Laravel | 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 | | league/glide | ^2.0 \| ^3.0 | Optional: `imagick` extension for AVIF output and SVG rasterization. --- ## Wrapping Up If your project doesn't need the full power of Spatie Media Library — associations, conversions, responsive images — and you just want to serve the right image size without pre-generating everything, `laravel-imagepresets` is worth a look. Install it, define a few presets, drop `@imagepreset()` into your Blade templates, and you're done. ```bash composer require fomvasss/laravel-imagepresets ``` → [GitHub](https://github.com/fomvasss/laravel-imagepresets) · [Packagist](https://packagist.org/packages/fomvasss/laravel-imagepresets) --- *Have questions or found a bug? Open an issue on GitHub.*