Openverse has moved from a self-hosted Imaginary instance for thumbnail generation to using Photon. Photon is a fast and flexible open-source image service with powerful tools for cropping, resizing, and filtering images.
The hosted instance of Photon we’re connecting to is provided to all Jetpack-connected WordPress sites, or sites hosted on the WordPress.com platform. As we’ve been granted permission to use this for the Openverse frontend and API, other instances of the Openverse API, should you choose to host one, would need to connect to a different endpoint to comply with Photon’s Terms of Service. The Openverse API is easily configurable to switch to a different thumbnail proxy endpoint.
Please let us know if you encounter any issues with thumbnails on wordpress.org/openverse or in our API responses. Any feedback or concerns can be shared as comments on this post or as a GitHub issue. Thank you!