Sources

In Laravel Image, the place where your images files are stored is called a source. You can have multiple source and each source can implements a different driver. Currently there is two drivers supported: local and filesystem. The last one is based on Laravel Filesystems and it supports all the same drivers (Amazon S3, Ftp, ...). Just specify a disk that is defined in config/filesystems.php and you are good to go.

Configuration

Here is the default sources configuration from config/image.php:

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Default Source
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| This option define the default source to be used by the Image facade. The
| source determine where the image files are read and saved.
|
*/
'source' => 'public',

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Sources
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| The list of sources where you store images.
|
| Supported driver: "local", "filesystem"
|
*/
'sources' => [

    'public' => [
        // The local driver use a local path on the machine.
        'driver' => 'local',

        // The path where the images are stored.
        'path' => public_path()
    ],

    'cloud' => [
        // The filesystem driver lets you use the filesystem from laravel.
        'driver' => 'filesystem',

        // The filesystem disk where the images are stored.
        'disk' => 'public',

        // The path on the disk where the images are stored. If set to null,
        // it will start from the root.
        'path' => null,

        // Cache the file on local machine. It can be useful for remote files.
        'cache' => true,

        // The path where you want to put cached files
        'cache_path' => storage_path('image/cache')
    ]

],

Usage

When you interact with the Image facade or the image() helper, by default the images are taken from the default source defined in the config. If you want to use another source, you can do:

$image = image()->source('cloud')->open('path/to/an/image.jpg');

// or
$image = image()->source('cloud')->make('path/to/an/image.jpg', [
    'width' => 100,
    'height' => 100
]);

Be carefull the $image object returned by the make() and open() methods implements a save() method. This method will save on your local disk only. To save an image on a specific source, use:

image()->source('cloud')->save($image, 'path/on/the/source/image.jpg');