ImageToBase64 is a tool to convert image to base64 string. Converting an image to base64 string is needed if you wish to embed images directly into web page using the Data URL scheme.

What is Data URL scheme?

It is a method to embed images directly into an HTML or CSS file.

Advantage using Data URL scheme?

Because images are already included in the web page, only one http request is needed to load all of the images. Thus the page load time should be improved.

Disadvantage using Data URL scheme?

Image loaded using the Data URL scheme is not cached by the web browser. It’s mean the web browser need to re-download the image every time it occurs in a document.

How to work round the disadvantage?

By simply putting the Data URL scheme inside an CSS page, the image caching problem can be solved. Why? Because all web browsers today aggressively cache CSS page. When the CSS page is cached, all embedded images inside it are automatically being cached as well.

Please note: the Data URL scheme work best for small image (size smaller than 4 KB).