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AWS Solutions Library

Dynamic Image Transformation for Amazon CloudFront

Transform, optimize, and deliver images in real time at a fraction of the cost

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Overview

Dynamic Image Transformation for Amazon CloudFront (formerly Serverless Image Handler) enables real-time image processing through the global content delivery network (CDN) of Amazon CloudFront. This AWS Solution helps you automatically optimize visual content delivery while significantly reducing operational costs and complexity. By dynamically transforming a single source image on-demand, it eliminates the need to store multiple versions of the same image, resulting in substantial storage savings. This solution also enhances the user experience through faster load times with improved caching, while providing robust security controls to protect against inappropriate content, including URL signing, request validation, and content moderation features.

Benefits

Transform and optimize images in real-time through simple API requests or pre-defined transformation policies.

Automatically serve the most efficient image size and format based on device type and browser capabilities, helping ensure optimal file size and quality, and eliminating the need to manage and store multiple versions of the same image.

Protect visual assets with URL signing, request validation, and content moderation features while maintaining granular access controls over your image delivery.

Automatically handle varying loads with serverless architecture, enabling consistent performance during traffic spikes without managing infrastructure.

How it works

ECS Architecture

This solution provides secure, scalable, dynamic image transformation capabilities using a serverless containerized AWS architecture. It leverages a Amazon CloudFront Functions for request and response normalization, with requests routed through Application Load Balancer to Amazon ECS Fargate containers that perform the image processing. The containerized workload pulls the source images from Amazon S3 or external origins and integrates with Amazon Rekognition for AI-powered transformations like smart-cropping. The architecture includes a comprehensive management interface built on AWS Amplify and secured by Amazon Cognito, with API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB for configuration management. Amazon CloudFront provides edge caching for optimized delivery.

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Lambda Architecture

This solution enables secure, scalable, dynamic image transformations using a serverless AWS architecture. It starts with CloudFront Functions for request and response normalization, uses API Gateway and Lambda for image processing, integrates with Rekognition for AI-powered features, and stores images in S3. Request signing validation is handled through Secrets Manager, while CloudFront provides edge caching for optimized delivery.

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About this deployment

  • Version: 8.0.0
  • Released: 11/2025
  • Author: AWS
  • Est. deployment time: 15 mins
  • Estimated cost: See details

Deploy with confidence

Everything you need to launch this AWS Solution in your account is right here

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Get started fast. Read the implementation guide for deployment steps, architecture details, cost information, and customization options.

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Let's make it happen

Ready to deploy? Open the CloudFormation template in the AWS Console to begin setting up the infrastructure you need. You'll be prompted to access your AWS account if you haven't yet logged in. 

Launch ECS Architecture in the AWS Console
Launch Lambda Architecture in the AWS Console

Customers

Fotaflo

"Getting a working test version only took a couple of days. Within 2 weeks we launched in production and had migrated 75% of our image transformations at roughly ¼ of the cost we were previously paying the third-party service. On top of that, we still don't need to worry about maintaining the pipeline infrastructure or scaling servers due to the Amazon CloudFront, Amazon S3, and AWS Lambda architecture. Now our product team can get back to thinking about what more we can do with photos rather than how we can reduce the costs associated with transforming them."

Martin Eckart Systems Architect, Fotaflo

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Map Your Show

"At Map Your Show we manage thousands of images across web-based exhibitor profiles and mobile apps. By using Dynamic Image Transformation for CloudFront, we've simplified our image collection process and improved exhibitor platform onboarding time by 37%. The solution has been instrumental in helping us deliver high-performance, dynamically transformed images at scale— all without the need to manage multiple variants or maintain additional infrastructure."

Drew Martin, VP of Technology, Map Your Show

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Perpetual

“Dynamic Image Transformation for Amazon CloudFront has proven it can scale globally while keeping availability high and image delivery efficient. For us, it’s been a complete solution for handling image optimization and delivery.”

Vishal Gandhi, CTO, Perpetual

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