[jrochkind1]

So "up front" still includes doing the processing in a background job async, as long as it's triggered at point of upload, not at point of request?

"upfront" but async background does seem to be the best way to approach it to me, at least if you had to pick one -- that's what Shrine does?

[janko-m]

Yes, you got it right, this is exactly what it means. Yeah, there are some rare use cases for on-the-fly processing (think a WYSIWYG editor where the user can choose the size of the image), but for me upfront definitely works best.

[jrochkind1]

Cool. I'd call those two choices "upon upload" (instead of 'upfront'), and "upon first view" (instead of "on the fly"), but I'm sure my terminology would confuse someone else too.