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As you can see above, there are two options to choose Base64 to image converter and image to Base64 converter. Base64 to image will convert any Base64 string to image format. Image to Base64 will convert image into Base64 string. Please click on the option depending upon your need.

How to Use Base64 to Image Converter Tool?

Base64 to image converter tool will help you in converting your Base64 encoded string into an image. You can download that image by clicking on download button. Simply paste your Base64 encoded string into the input box and it will automatically convert it into an image and preview will be shown on your screen. You can also select any text file which contains Base64 encoded string. There are also options to copy Base64 encoded string and clear input box.

How to Use Image to Base64 Converter Tool?

Image to Base64 converter tool will help you in converting any image into Base64 encoded string, html image tag code and CSS background image code. Simply drag and drop the image in the above rectangular box or just click on it to select image file.

As soon as the processing is done, three input boxes will appear. First input box will contain Base64 encoded string. Second input box will contain HTML image tag code which you can simply copy and directly paste into your HTML file. Third box will contain CSS code with background image property. You can copy and paste it directly in the CSS file. There will also download option above each input box which will help you in downloading the respective data in text file format. The tool supports almost all commonly used image formats.

Why Should You Convert Base64 String to Image?

The size of Base64 string used in data URI is 33% more than the original file. Large data can impact web performance. Converting that encoded data into an image and using it as file, may improve performance of your web application. Another reason of converting Base64 to image, is having a file that can be saved in your hard disk and can be viewed or edited with third party image viewing and editing tools.

What is Base64 Encoding?

Base64 is textual encoding of binary data. The encoded text has nothing but numbers, letters and the symbols like +, / and =. It is known as one of most convenient ways to store or transmit binary data over media that is specifically used for textual data. Also, it can be easily transmitted in things like e-mail and HTML form data. The text to Base64 conversion process takes 4 characters per 3 bytes of data, plus potentially a bit of padding at the end. Equal sign (=) is used for padding. The encoded string can also passed as value to query parameter in a URL since it is URL-safe variant.

Why Should You Use Base64 Encoding?

When we have some binary data that we want to transmit across a network, we generally do not do it by just streaming the bits and bytes over the wire in a raw format because some media contents are made for streaming text. If we transmit it in the form of bits or bytes, then some protocols may interpret this binary data as control characters (like a modem). Such binary data could get corrupted because the underlying protocol might assume that this data contains some special character combination. For example, FTP translates line endings. To get around this issue, we encode such binary data into characters. Base64 is one of these types of encodings.

Base64 encoded string contains 64 ASCII characters which represents the encoded data. These 64 characters are enough to encode any data of any length. The only drawback of base64 encoding is that the size of the encoded string will be 33% more as compared to original string. All base64 characters are present in many character sets and this makes sure that transmitted data will definitely reach the other end uncorrupted. Base64 characters can be grouped into 4 groups:

• Uppercase alphabets (indices 0-25): ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
• Lowercase alphabets (indices 26-51): abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
• Digits (indices 52-61): 0123456789
• Symbols (indices 62-63): +/

Characters in base64 encoded string are case sensitive. This means that, for instance, when you try to decode base64 encoded strings such as ab ==, Ab==, aB==, and AB==; you will get 4 different results. Equal sign (=) is not part of the index and also not involved in the encoding process. It is only used for padding and also known as padding character. It ensures that base64 encoded string should be multiple of 4 bytes that is why it is always appended at the end of the encoded string. Please have a look over base64 characters index table given below for better understanding.

Where is Base64 Used?

Base64 is used various contexts. Some of them are given below.

• Base64 can be used to transmit and store text data to avoid any kind of delimiter collision.
• Binary data is embedded in XML files using Base64.
• Base64 is used to encode binary files such as images, to avoid dependency on external files.
• The data URI scheme also use Base64 to represent image files. That’s why, an image source in HTML document can be path to an external file or a data URI.
• Base64 is commonly used to obscure secrets without the overhead of cryptographic key management because it is simple and easy to use.
• Spammers also use Base64 encoding to avoid basic anti-spamming tools because they cannot detect keywords in encoded messages.
• In LDIF files, Base64 is used to encode character strings.

What is Data URL or Data URI?

Data URL or URI stands for data uniform resource locator or uniform resource identifier. It is simply a scheme that provides a mechanism to inline data in an HTML document. Data URI contains a base64 encoded string that represents a file.

File can be of different types but most commonly it is an image file. Having image data in base64 encoded string format simply means that to display an image on the web, you do not need to specify image location. You can directly use that encoded string as value of source attribute to display an image. Whenever the browser encounters data URI, it will be able to decode the file and construct the original file. Data URI scheme contains information about the file such as its MIME type as well as base64 encoded string. Please have a look over the code given below.

data:[<MIME-type>][;charset=<encoding>][;base64],<data>

Depending upon the file size, base64 encoded string length can vary. You can use data URI in CSS file as well as HTML file.

Advantages of Using Data URL or Data URI

The main advantage of using data URI instead of file path is reducing number of outgoing http requests. Too many http requests to the server requesting for same file again and again can increase load on server. If you directly embed it in HTML, then there will be no more outgoing requests since the file is already present in HTML document in encoded format. Browser just need to decode it and display it. As mentioned above, the size of base64 string in data URI will be 33% more than the actual file size. It is all about performance optimization and strictly depends upon your choice which method you prefer to load file.

Data URI is not cached by browser so every time a user visits the web page, browser has to download entire HTML and it has to decode embedded data. Too much usage of data URI in HTML can significantly harm the performance of a website. You must keep its usage as low as possible. You might not see much of difference in terms of performance in desktop or laptop due to high speed wireless connection. But in case of mobile devices, which has slow internet speed, it will harm significantly. If your website will take too much time to load in mobile devices, then definitely there will be loss of revenue and low to none user engagement.

Data URI Browser Support

Data URI are supported by all of the modern browsers. The older browsers such as IE5 and IE7 do not support it so avoid using it if you need support for those browsers or you can try to look for some alternate solution online. Please have a look over the supported browsers list given below.

• Firefox version 2+
• Opera version 7.2+ (The length of data URIs must not be longer than 4100 characters)
• Chrome (all versions are supported)
• Safari (all versions are supported)
• Internet Explorer 8+ (The size of data URIs must be smaller than 32kb)