Alternatives to Sharp for image optimization on Cloudflare Workers?

[andrewLapshov]

Hi everyone,

I'm deploying Payload CMS on Cloudflare Workers and looking for recommendations regarding image optimization.

As far as I understand, Payload relies on Sharp for image processing, but Sharp doesn't work in the Cloudflare Workers runtime because native Node.js binaries are not supported.

I'm curious how others are handling image optimization in a Workers-based deployment.

Some questions:

Are there any production-ready alternatives to Sharp that work inside Cloudflare Workers?
Has anyone successfully integrated libraries such as @cf-wasm/photon, squoosh, or other WASM-based solutions with Payload?
Is it better to completely offload image transformations to Cloudflare Images or another external service?
Are there any community examples of running Payload image processing on Workers without Sharp?

My goal is to keep the deployment fully serverless on Cloudflare if possible, while still supporting image resizing, format conversion (WebP/AVIF), and optimization.

I'd appreciate hearing about any approaches, trade-offs, or examples from real-world deployments.

Thanks!

[CarloBu]

Hi, Andrew
Yes, you can use Cloudflare Workers to resize images. I solved this in my new Payload + Astro Cloudflare template that I'm working on by not using Payload’s Sharp-based image sizes at all.
Payload stores the original uploads in R2. Image resizing and format conversion happen on demand through Cloudflare Images using a Worker.

[apoorva-01]

The thing to internalize first: Payload's image pipeline isn't pluggable. imageSizes is hardwired to sharp, so there's no "swap in a WASM codec and Payload uses it" option. On Workers you drop sharp entirely and do the transforms out of process.

Sharp is optional in the config now, so that part is easy. Just don't pass it:

export default buildConfig({
  // sharp,  <- leave this out on Workers
  collections: [Media],
})

Without sharp you lose imageSizes, formatOptions, focal-point cropping, all of it. Uploads still work fine, Payload just stores the original (in R2 in your case) and skips resizing. That's the whole trade.

From there you've got two real paths, and they're the ones CarloBu already pointed at:

1. Offload to Cloudflare Images / Image Resizing. Store the original in R2, resize/convert on demand by hitting a /cdn-cgi/image/... URL or the Images binding. This is what the official with-cloudflare-d1 template does, and honestly it's the one I'd reach for. Format conversion to WebP/AVIF is a query param, and you're not shipping WASM.

2. Do it in-Worker with WASM if you want to stay off a paid Images plan. @jsquash/* is the one built for this, it's derived from Squoosh and explicitly runs in the Workers runtime (no dynamic eval, no TextEncoder reliance). @jsquash/resize + @jsquash/webp/@jsquash/avif covers resize plus format conversion. @cf-wasm/photon works too. Either way it's a separate step you wire up yourself (an upload hook or a transform Worker), not something Payload calls for you.

For most setups the Cloudflare Images route is less code and less to maintain. Reach for jSquash when you specifically want to keep everything on Workers with no extra service.