Scaleflex DMO can download images from any web server over HTTP/HTTPS. Add your image storage servers and optionally set authentication credentials in case your server require authentication.

If your images are stored at URL https://mystorage.example.com and you can access image.jpg with the following URL:

//mystorage.example.com/image.jpg

You should enter the data as per the following screenshot:

All aliases have to be prefixed and suffixed by underscores. Please note that all aliases have to be unique for your account.

Your storage is now accessible by using the alias entered in the Alias field. //your-token.cloudimg.io/_ownstorage_/image.jpg

If your storage requires authentication, you can enter your username and password.

AWS S3 is a robust storage solution that is widely used by businesses of all sizes for various applications, from data backup to content delivery.

Steps to configure AWS S3 external storage as a Storage alias:

1. Click on the +Add connection button in the AWS S3 section

2. In the pop-up window submit a request to the Support team. Please provide the following details:

   1. Bucket name - the name of your S3 bucket (the folder within AWS S3 where files are stored).

   2. Region - the location of the bucket

   3. Alias - the value of the storage alias you would like to use to hide the S3 bucket path behind it.

   4. Key ID & Secret key (optional) - the authentication credentials for access to the bucket

is a high-performance cloud storage solution provided by Microsoft Azure, designed for storing large amounts of data.

Prerequisites:

In order to configure an Azure Blob as an external storage for your project, you need to have:

• an Azure Blob storage account

• access to the Azure portal

• permissions to generate a SAS token if needed

Steps to configure Azure Blob as a Storage alias:

• Click on the +Add connection button in the section:

• In the pop-up window submit a request to the Support team. Please provide the following details:

  1. Blob name - the name of your Azure blob storage (the folder within Azure Blob storage where files are stored).

  2. Alias - the value of the storage alias you would like to use to hide the Azure Blob path behind it.

  3. Blob SAS token (optional)- the authentication token for access to the blob. It is needed when the blob is Private.

If your Azure Blob container requires authentication, you have to provide your SAS token (found in your Azure panel) in your message to the Support team.

Please keep in mind that the SAS token has an expiration date and you have to generate a new one and update it before it expires. Otherwise, our servers will not be able to fetch your media from the storage.

Dynamic Media Optimization (DMO) settings allows you to optimize and manage images and videos to enhance performance and user experience. You have the option to customize the compression ratio and optimize the images color profiles, as well as setting the default watermark to be applied.

Please note that, After saving these settings, you will need to invalidate your cached images if you want to apply changes to the already published ones.

The settings can be found in the top left corner of your DMO dahsboard, next to your profile icon.

ICC color profiles typically describe the color input or output device of an image. For digital images distributed online, sRGB is mostly used, while CMYK is the standard for printers. Color profiles are set when exporting images from the camera or the graphics editor. They sometimes add unnecessary weight to your image files and slow down loading times on the web. Scaleflex DMO converts by default the ICC color profile into sRGB on-the-fly, which is the most optimal ICC profile for the web. You can change the default behavior. We can automatically convert your profiles to a sRGB profile in order to have a minimum loss of quality and a much lighter filesize. You might notice a small difference in the colors but usually it's not noticeable.

By default, if the origin image has an embedded ICC profile, the image is converted to the sRGB colour space and the ICC profile is removed from the compressed image. We can automatically convert your profiles to a sRGB profile in order to have a minimum loss of quality and a much lighter file size. You may choose not to use the above feature by enabling the checkbox "Keep origin image ICC profile". You can also specify that the ICC profile will only be converted to sRGB if it is larger than XX KBs.

Scaleflex DMO can place a watermark on top of your images if you want to protect them from copying or tag them with a serial number or custom text.

There are two types of watermarks:

1. Static watermark: Apply the same image watermark to all the images you decide to watermark (e.g. your company's logo)

2. Dynamic watermark: Specify the watermark in the Scaleflex DMO URL to apply different watermarks to different images.

To activate the watermark function, you need to include the wat=1 parameter.

Available parameters

Example: //your-token.cloudimg.io/original_image_url/image.jpg?wat=1&wat_gravity=north&wat_text=A%20VERY%20LONG%20TEXT%20WHICH%20WON%27T%20FIT&wat_pad=10&wat_font=Arial-Black&wat_fontsize=20max&wat_color=000

Please note that the watermark cannot be larger than the image - if larger, it is always scaled down first to match the image dimensions.

CNAME or canonical name in Scaleflex DMO is used to replace your-token.cloudimg.io with your own domain name.

Example: //your-token.cloudimg.io/original_image_url/image.jpg to be replaced by //your-own-domain-name.com/original_image_url/image.jpg

Add one or multiple custom domains to deliver DAM assets over your subdomains, for example medias.acme.com. Once the custom domain added, you will need to create 2 DNS CNAME entries to validate the TLS certificate and point your subdomain to Scaleflex DMO.

Example:

• DNS1: _076f48ef8df3a3ca368b89c6f0bb0bcf.medias.acme.com. CNAME _29163927834ee4c4e03c365fd7282c74.nhqijqisfx.acm-validations.cdnprovider

• DNS2: medias.acme.com CNAME token.cdnprovider.com

Presets:

You can create custom transformations using presets to shorten the Scaleflex DMO urls. If you wish to apply the same transformations on many images, you can define presets and apply transformations only using the preset name (X). Presets are used to shorten Scaleflex DMO delivery URLs and also used for generating dynamic asset transformations upon upload.

Example: //your-token.cloudimg.io/original_image_url/image.jpg?h=100&w=400&func=crop to be replaced by //your-token.cloudimg.io/original_image_url/image.jpg?p=car_x

Aliases:

Aliases can be used to shorten your Scaleflex DMO delivery URLs and hide parts of the asset folder path. Aliases must be prefixed and suffixed with underscores.

Example: //your-token.cloudimg.io/http://sample.li/image.jpg to be replaced by //your-token.cloudimg.io/_dmo_sample_/image.jpg

Please note that all aliases have to be unique for your account - aliases set in the alias section cannot be used in the Storage sections.

Due to the specific way aliases are matched, it is required to use only specific aliases that are not contained in part of other alias strings.

Example: If you define an alias _dmo_sample_ then you should not have:

• _dmo_

• _dmo_one_two_

• _my_dmo_one_

Scaleflex DMO allows you define transformation rules based on image path and filename pattern matching. Rules allows you to apply default transformations on assets based on the asset’s filename.

This rule will apply the transformations - h=300&w=300&wat=1 for all image urls which contains .png string in their filename.

External domain whitelisting:

You can whitelist specific domains in order to allow only specific external sources to be requested. In addition, you can combine Domain whitelisting with Aliases above to send custom headers to an non-public external storage for authentication purposes.

In order to whitelist a specific domain, you need to enter the domain name without https://

Here, domain sample.li is whitelisted. Which means that if we try to process an image with any other domain except sample.li (eg: www.your-own-domain.com), it will return a HTTP 406 (Not acceptable) error.

However, this response can be changed to HTTP 404 (Default missing image)

In Scaleflex DMO, a delivery URL is the generated link that allows users to access and retrieve optimized images or media files. This URL typically includes parameters that dictate how the image should be processed, transformed, or served.

//your-token.cloudimg.io/original_image_url/image.jpg

We can make various changes in this delivery url.

1. CNAME

2. URL format (Presets and Aliases)

3. Rules

4. Security

5. Caching

6. Default behaviours

Image compression is a type of data compression applied to digital images, to reduce their cost for storage or transmission. Scaleflex DMO compresses your image using compression filters for faster delivery and loading time.

The various Image Compression settings available are:

• JPEG - Default Compression factor: This signifies the default compression ratio for all your images. It is recommended to give the value "85" here. "100" value means no compression ie. image will be delivered as it is and "0" value means it will be compressed into zip ie.

• Progressive JPEG: Progressive JPEG is used for loading a low quality image to fill the container (due to slow networks) while the actual image loads. You can enable or disable this feature.

• PNG - Enable PNG lossy compression: PNG Lossy compression is an algorithm designed to reduce the size of your PNGs while keeping visual quality. You can enable this feature by checking the "Enable PNG lossy compression"

• PNG - Default PNG quality: Same as JPEG - Default Compression factor , this field defines the compression ratio for your images. It is recommended to give the value "85" here. "100" value means no compression ie. image will be delivered as it is and "0" value means it will be compressed into zip ie.

• SVG - Rasterize SVG: SVG is a vector-based format which is already well compressed. When Rasterize SVG is active, all SVG files are converted to a raster image.

• SVG - Enable SVG lossy compression: SVG Lossy compression refers to the technique of reducing the filesize by reducing the number of curve nodes and remove invisible elements to decrease filesize.

• WEBP: WEBP is an image format supported by most modern browsers (full list). It achieves better compression than JPEG and is optimized for web delivery. 1. Compress all PNGs to WebP automatically: Checking this feature will compress your PNG images to WEBP format. 2. Compress animated GIFs to animated WebP automatically: Checking this feature will compress your animated GIFs to animated WEBP format. 3. Compress all other image formats to WebP automatically: Checking this feature will compress images with other formats (JPEG, BMP , PDF, Adobe etc) into WEBP format.

• AVIF - Enable AVIF compression: AVIF is a web image format with increasing popularity and browser support. Scaleflex DMO can compress your images automatically into AVIF to reduce bandwidth and improve loading times. Checking this feature will compress your AVIF images.

• AVIF - Compress by default: This feature will compress your AVIF images by default.

Scaleflex DMO offers you the option to deliver any file, including non-processable files - static content like JS or CSS files, via our Content Delivery Network.

By default, all URLs are regarded as images. To deliver a non-image file, you have to use the func=proxy option.

//your-token.cloudimg.io/original_url/bootstrap.css?func=proxy

Scaleflex DMO can automatically use the proxy function for all files that don't have an image file extension. This however will require all your images to have proper file extensions. If you prefer this behavior, you can switch it on in your DMO settings (settings/dmo/static-content)

Caching accelerates the loading times of images as it allows to host them as close as possible to your end users. By caching, your ensure maximum performance of your website.

When this cache expires, the image will be requested from the origin and the new image delivered to the client.

Please note that these settings can be changed upon request via a ticket to our support team.

Browser cache expiration interval (Max-age): The time in seconds that the image is allowed to be re-used. For instance, max-age=86400 indicates that an image remains in the browser cache for the next 86400 seconds (24 hours).

CDN cache expiration interval (S-maxage): S-maxage = 31536000 indicates that the image remains in the CDN cache for 31536000 seconds (1 year)

Automatic origin image refresh: If you need to use a very small caching interval for a specific image (for example, snapshots from a live webcam or a specific chart with dynamically changing contents), you need to change the Automatic origin image refresh setting in your Admin console. This tells our resizing servers to update all origin images after this interval has expired.

Google Cloud Storage (GCS) is a scalable, secure, and highly available cloud storage service offered by Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It is designed to store and manage large amounts of data.

Steps to configure GCS as a Storage alias:

• Click on the +Add connection button in the GCP section:

• In the pop-up window submit a request to the Support team. Please provide the following details:

  1. Bucket name - the name of your Google Cloud bucket (the folder within Google Cloud where files are stored).

  2. Alias - the value of the storage alias you would like to use to hide the Google Cloud bucket path behind it.

  3. Auth JSON token (optional)- the authentication token for access to the bucket. It is needed when the bucket is Private.

In case that your Google Cloud bucket requires authentication:

• You need to generate an Authentication JSON file using the guide in the Google Cloud documentation

• You will be provided with JSON file to be saved on your computer

• Please attach it to your message to the Support team in order to configure the Alias settings.

If the original image is missing or the original image url is not accessible, you can define what default image to show to the end user who is trying to access the url.

You can also select the type of response:

1. HTTP 200 with default image

2. HTTP 200 with transparent 1x1 px GIF (V7 API only)

3. HTTP 404 with default image

4. HTTP 404 with empty image (body = 0 bytes)

Your default DAM storage is defined in the DAM Storage configuration page. However, you can optionally configure external storage providers as Origin sources for your assets. Once configured, these external storage providers will be hidden behind an alias within your dynamically optimized URLs.

List of supported external Storage providers:

1. AWS S3 or any other S3-compatible storage provider

2. Google Cloud storage (GCP)

3. Azure Blob storage

4. Own HTTP-based Storage