Cloudinary - The gold standard of managing your media assets (Review 2021)
Many organizations need platforms to manage their digital assets, including document, image, video, audio file, visual, animation, or any other piece of media content. To handle those assets, they need a Digital Asset Manager (DAM) software to organize, share, track, and distribute them. Using DAM software, you can improve access to your digital assets, keeps them secure, and allows you to manage the complete lifecycle of your digital assets—from creation to archive.
There are several DAM software available on the internet. Therefore, in this article, we cover one of the best DAM software, Cloudinary.
Getting Started
Cloudinary is a software as a service (SaaS) corporation based in Santa Clara, California. The company offers image and video management services over the cloud. You can use it to upload, store, manage, alter, and transmit photos and videos for usage on websites and apps.
More than 7,500 enterprises, including Dropbox, Forbes, and Answers.com, use Cloudinary to develop web and mobile applications. Cloudinary has been dubbed the “gold standard” of image management on the internet by Inc. Magazine.
How Is the History of Cloudinary?
Cloudinary was founded in 2011 in Israel by Itai Lahan (CEO), Tal Lev-Ami (CTO), and Nadav Soferman (CPO). At first, it only offers images over clouds SaaS. Then, in 2014, Cloudinary introduced the fully integrated image processing add-ons, integrating with Imagga, URL2PNG, Aspose, WebPurify, and other technologies.
Expanding the company, Cloudinary opened its U.S. offices in Palo Alto, California in 2015. It also starts offering video management. The company relocated to Santa Clara, California, in 2019 and released tools for creating responsive breakpoints. Cloudinary has been awarded one of Forbes’ 2019 Cloud 100 Rising Stars.
What Does Cloudinary Do?
Cloudinary is an end-to-end image and video management solution for websites and mobile apps. It covers services for image and video uploads, storage, manipulations, optimizations to delivery.
With Cloudinary, you can easily upload images and videos to the cloud and automate smart manipulations of those media without installing any other software. Then, it will deliver your media through a fast content delivery network (CDN), optimized with the industry’s best practices.
Additionally, Cloudinary offers comprehensive APIs and administration capabilities, which you can easily integrate with your web and mobile apps.
Image Transformation
(Transform, adapt, and optimize images with a URL-based API)
Save your time from manually pre-creating pictures for various browsers, devices, channels, and campaigns. With Cloudinary, you can crop, resize, transcode, filter, and optimize photos on the fly. It works automatically from a single high-resolution original, then customizes and distributes the best relevant version to each user.
Gallery of Image Transformation
(Transform and adapt for any context)
Use content-aware AI to automatically resize, crop, and transcode photos to fit any design, layout, or viewport. Cloudinary makes delivery easier by balancing the dimensions and bandwidth trade-off. Select optimal breakpoints automatically and dynamically generate variations that are the right size for the viewport. Automatic art-directed cropping guarantees that photographs suit any device’s layout while keeping the focus on the important area.
Optimize for Faster Loading
Dynamic Format Transcoding
Transcode raw images to any web-friendly format, or utilize automatic format selection to send each image in the most efficient format possible depending on the image content and context.
Automatic Quality Compression
Adjust the quality of each image to your desired compression level, or automate the process of determining the best compression without sacrificing visual quality.
What Are the Features inside Cloudinary?
Manage Any Rich Media Format
Cloudinary can hold, transform, and deliver a wide range of media types, including pictures, videos, GIFs, 3D pictures, PDFs, PSDs, and more.
Leverage AI to automate and save time
Automate file labeling, background removal, Al-based cropping, and video previews, among other media management tasks.
Easy Overlays to Personalize Media
Add overlays to photos and videos to enhance interaction across all channels – website, apps, social media, advertisements, and more.
Automate Responsive Images and Video
Automatic width selection, responsive breakpoint support, HTTP client hints, and adaptive streaming for videos ensure that your rich media assets appear great on any screen.
Use Widgets to Deliver Great User Experiences
Cloudinary provides a number of media upload, product galleries, and video player widgets that you can quickly connect into your front end to create rich digital experiences.
Use Cloudinary APIs and SDKs
Using APIs that interact seamlessly with your existing application code, implement picture and video upload, transformation, optimization, and delivery capabilities.
Upload Preset
Cloudinary has an upload preset that automatically analyzes your images to get the best out of your images. This is done by creating an Upload Preset that activates the analysis add-ons.
How Is the Pricing of Cloudinary?
Self-Service Monthly
- FREE $0 – Free Forever No Credit Card Required
Personalize photos and videos in seconds to elevate your blogs, hackathons, and projects to new heights.
- PLUS $99/Month
Extend the digital media capabilities of your small team when it comes to producing, developing, and managing websites and mobile apps.
- ADVANCED $249/Month
With extensive features and capabilities, create engaging visual experiences for growing enterprises.
Self Service Yearly (10% Discount)
- FREE $0 – Free Forever No Credit Card Required
Personalize photos and videos in seconds to elevate your blogs, hackathons, and projects to new heights.
- PLUS $89/Month
- ADVANCED $224/Month
Find out more about Cloudinary’s pricing plans here.
Does Cloudinary Have a File Size Limit?
The maximum image file size that may be uploaded to Cloudinary on their free plan is 10 MB, while the maximum video file size is 100 MB. Other than photos and movies, raw files are limited to 10 MB.
The restrictions are higher on their premium plans, beginning at 20 MB for photos and raw files and 500 MB for films on the Plus plan, with higher limitations on the larger plans. On the pricing page for each of our regular plans, you can see a comparison of the limits that apply to each plan.
When it comes to converting photographs, there are also limitations in terms of the image’s maximum dimensions, which are defined in megapixels. This limit is 25 megapixels on their free plan, and the limits for other plans can be found on their pricing website.
How to Use Cloudinary?
Pro
- The best photo and video transform on the market.
- Provide complete images editing (filters, size improvements, and formatting)
- Allow you to save photographs to an S3 bucket or optimized CDN.
- Have built-in viewer.
- Helpful documentation.
Cons
- Pricing is a little overpriced.
- Too many features.
- Their API does require URLs.
- The plans are quite confusing.
What are the alternatives to Cloudinary?
- MediaValet – best for organizing gigantic asset libraries
- CoSchedule Asset Organizer – best for marketing teams
- Canto – best overall DAM software
- Brandfolder – best easy-to-use DAM software
- IntelligenceBank – best for creative collaboration
Conclusion
Cloudinary is an image transformation tool that uses a URL-based API to transform, adapt, and optimize images. Remove the time-consuming procedure of manually pre-creating all of the many variations of each picture for various browsers, devices, channels, and campaigns. It’s also a Gallery of Image Transformation, with the ability to change and adapt to any situation. Use content-aware AI to automatically resize, crop, and transcode photos to fit any design, layout, or viewport.
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