imglab

Responsive images just got a whole lot easier with our new srcset generation feature. Now included in the latest upgrade for all our integration libraries.

We have written a new blog post (our first one!) documenting this new feature. Take a look!

https://imglab.io/blog/responsive-images-with-automatic-srcset-generation

JPEG XL Beta support is here!

A week after Google officially removed JPEG XL from Chrome we have added Beta support for this format.

No, we are not crazy. We believe in JPEGL XL as a promising image format for the Web (and not only the Web). In our internal tests, JPEG XL overpasses other modern image formats like AVIF and WebP in every possible aspect and we want to support this project.

We have plans to write a blog post about the numbers that we have comparing AVIF and WebP with JPEG XL.

Stay tuned!.

https://imglab.io/docs/render/format#jxl

We have just released our new landing page. 🎉

Besides a big redesign we have tried to improve the explanations by adding many examples about the imglab API.

We would like to know your opinion.

By the way, did you know that the Open Graph image that accompanies our link has been generated on the fly by our API? Isn't it cool?

https://imglab.io

These last few months we have been collecting feedback from our customers, friends and colleagues here at Indie Hackers about imglab and what we could improve.

One of the most recurring comments was the lack of a free plan to start experimenting with imglab (we want to thank everyone who gave us their honest feedback ❤️).

Thanks to those comments we have launched today the new free forever plan with support for 1,000 master images. 🎉

We think it's the best time to start using and experimenting with imglab to optimize your website.

We hope you enjoy it.

https://imglab.io/pricing

We have just launched our new Python package for imglab.

Now it's easier than ever to generate imglab API URLs using Python.

Let's see one small example:

import imglab

imglab.url(
    "assets",
    "image.jpeg",
    width=500,
    height=600,
    format="avif"
)

This previous call to imglab.url will generate the following URL:

https://assets.imglab-cdn.net/image.jpeg?width=500&height=600&format=avif

Take a look to our documentation for more examples:

https://pypi.org/project/imglab

👋

We are happy to announce the launching of the new text rendering API for imglab. With this new feature it is possible to render text over source images in many different ways.

Some of the possible use cases for this new feature:

• Labeling images in a catalog so they are easily identified.
• Creating parameterized banners that can be easily modified.
• Creating social banners or images.

We have created some examples so you can take a look of how far you can go with imglab. These images are rendered on the fly and delivered by our CDN.

For this first example we are trying to reproduce what a known music application does to generate the cover for an artist most listened tracks:

This is the Ruby code used to generate the image. Additionally we have libraries for JavaScript and Elixir as well (with Python and Go on the works):

Imglab.url(
  assets,
  "daft-punk.jpeg",
  width: 800,
  height: 800,
  mode: :crop,
  crop: :attention,
  padding_top: 320,
  saturate: -100,
  text: "<span size=\"3.5pt\" weight=\"600\">THIS IS</span>\nDaft Punk",
  text_font: "Thunder",
  text_weight: 700,
  text_align: :center,
  text_line_height: 1.3,
  text_width: 800,
  text_height: 320,
  text_position: position("center", "top"),
  text_y: -320,
  text_padding: 78,
  text_padding_top: 80,
  watermark: "logo-square.svg?format=png",
  watermark_y: -320,
  watermark_scale: 11,
  watermark_padding: 16,
  watermark_alpha: 90
)

The same previous URL but modifying the source image and the text parameter:

For the next example we want to generate a fictional banner about virtual reality development:

And this is the Ruby code used to generate the banner image URL:

Imglab.url(
  assets,
  "vr.jpeg",
  width: 800,
  shape: "shape.svg?format=png",
  padding: 10,
  padding_left: 370,
  background_color: color(161, 155, 203),
  text: "Developing Virtual Reality <span bgcolor=\"#FFFA\">Environments</span>",
  text_font: "Thunder",
  text_x: -370,
  text_y: -10,
  text_padding: 20,
  text_width: 420,
  text_height: 400,
  watermark: "logo-square.svg?format=png&invert=true",
  watermark_x: -370,
  watermark_scale: 12,
  watermark_padding_left: 20,
  watermark_alpha: 70
)

Please take a look to our documentation. We can't wait to see what our users can do with this new feature.

https://imglab.io/docs/render/text

👋

We are glad to announce that today DemoWave has published a nice and useful book for SaaS founders, and imglab is part of it. 🎉

The SaaS Founder Resource Book includes a big number of tools and services of utility for founders and creators.

Please take a look and download it!

https://www.demowave.io/saas-catalog

After submitting imglab to BetaList a few weeks ago we have finally received confirmation that we have been accepted to be featured. 🎉

A small step for us, but we are happy with it. Let's see how this improves our signup numbers (we would like to make a report with the data later).

Many thanks to everyone who has given us feedback and support with imglab. 🥰

After one year of development and working closely with some customers we have launched the first open cloud version of imglab.

We are happy with what has been achieved in terms of features:

• Support for modern image formats like WebP and AVIF.
• Smart cropping options including face and entropy detection (and many more).
• Easy watermarking with many options.
• Image composition and custom masking.
• Image animation support with WebP and GIF.
• Scalable solution that is already supporting some businesses.
• Native integration libraries for Javascript, Ruby and Elixir.
• All of this with a friendly and easy API.
• And many, many more features.

We are happy and looking forward to continue improving the product with more features and options. 🎉