Supported Images

File formats

The Vision API supports the following image types:

• JPEG
• PNG8
• PNG24
• GIF
• Animated GIF (first frame only)
• BMP
• WEBP
• RAW
• ICO
• PDF
• TIFF

Note that some of these image formats are "lossy" (for example, JPEG). Reducing file sizes for such lossy formats may result in a degradation of image quality, and hence, Vision API accuracy.

Image sizing

To enable accurate image detection within the Vision API, images should generally be a minimum of 640 x 480 pixels (about 300k pixels). Full details for different types of Vision API Feature requests are shown below:

Vision API Feature	Recommended Size *	Notes
FACE_DETECTION	1600 x 1200	Distance between eyes is most important
LANDMARK_DETECTION	640 x 480
LOGO_DETECTION	640 x 480
LABEL_DETECTION	640 x 480
TEXT_DETECTION and DOCUMENT_TEXT_DETECTION	1024 x 768	OCR requires more resolution to detect characters
SAFE_SEARCH_DETECTION	640 x 480

Note: Vision API requires images to be a sufficient size so that important features within the request can be easily distinguished. Sizes smaller or larger than these recommended sizes may work. However, smaller sizes may result in lower accuracy, while larger sizes may increase processing time and bandwidth usage without providing comparable benefits in accuracy. Image size should not exceed 75M pixels (length x width) for OCR analysis. If the image size exceeds 75M pixels (length x width) , the Vision API resizes the image; otherwise, the Vision API uses the original image.

These recommended sizes differ based on the feature being detected. For example, FACE_DETECTION requests generally requires larger image sizes because the features being detected (faces) are smaller than the image itself. LABEL_DETECTION requests, on the other hand, generally evaluate an entire image.

In practice, a standard size of 640 x 480 pixels works well in most cases; sizes larger than this may not gain much in accuracy, while greatly diminishing throughput. When at all possible, pre-process your images to reduce their size to these minimum standards.

File size

Image files sent to the Vision API should not exceed 20MB. Files exceeding 20MB generate an error. The Vision API does not resize files of this size. Reducing your file size can significantly improve throughput; however, be careful not to reduce image quality in the process. Note that the Vision API imposes a 10MB JSON request size limit; larger files should be hosted on Cloud Storage or on the web, rather than being passed as base64-encoded content in the JSON itself.