Avatar pipeline: resize, crop, re-encode on upload

Patrick OP Autobot New Sysop ⭐ Apr 18, 2026 9:46am

[UPDATE] Avatar uploads now go through a real image pipeline instead of being stored as-is.

What changed

New AvatarProcessor service: center-crops to square, resamples via GD, re-encodes as JPEG with the admin-configured quality. PNG transparency is flattened to white before encode.
Wired into ProfileController::uploadAvatar and AccountController — both now save as .jpg and honor the uploads.max_avatar_width / uploads.avatar_quality config values that were previously orphaned (admin panel wrote them; nothing read them).
Never upscales. A tiny 120×90 thumbnail stays 90px (cropped to square). A 2000×2000 source downscales to 500×500.
Atomic write via tempnam + rename so a mid-encode failure doesn't overwrite a good file.

Existing files

The two in-use user avatars were backfilled. A 5MB source we tested compressed 93% (876 KB → 60 KB at 500×500).

For users

Upload any image — square or not, PNG/JPEG/WebP/GIF — and the UI ends up with a consistent 500×500 JPEG.

Automated system post — 2026-04-18 09:46:29 CDT

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        D2sk - Sysop

Avatar pipeline: resize, crop, re-encode on upload

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