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I believe that i.stack.imgur.com supports only 3 extensions: .gif, .jpg and .png.

Assume these three URLs with the same [ID]:

  1. i.stack.imgur.com/[ID].gif
  2. i.stack.imgur.com/[ID].jpg
  3. i.stack.imgur.com/[ID].png

Can they be different images? Or do these 3 URLs always point to the same image?

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    This is a feature of Imgur actually, it has nothing to do with SE.
    – Mast
    Commented Dec 28, 2023 at 17:01
  • @Mast Thanks, I didn't know, I'm ok if the question is moved to webapps.stackexchange.com then.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Dec 28, 2023 at 17:52

1 Answer 1

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At least with some brief experimentation, the answer seems to be no.

Using this image (arbitrarily picked from this answer), we can use any of the three format extensions in the image URL to retrieve the same image:

PNG JPG GIF
PNG image JPG image GIF image

Attempting to download any of the three, at least in my browser (Chrome v120), always results in a PNG image (which appears to be the "real" format), regardless of the extension in the URL.

This seems consistent with the idea that the Imgur image IDs are extension-agnostic, and correlate to a specific image outright, rather than a certain image in a specific format.

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    This is correct. Not sure why Imgur did it that way, but we have kept the same "feature" going forward with the Imgur replacement. All three extensions serve the same image. There is not three copies of the image.
    – Troy Gould StaffMod
    Commented May 3 at 15:08

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