The nine-view standard for dog breed images

Every set in Dog Image API shows one adult dog from nine fixed views on a square, transparent canvas. The dog fills at most 80% of the canvas and is centered, and standing views share one ground line. Every breed follows the same rules, so any two sets can sit side by side.

The images are AI-generated illustrations, not photos of real dogs. The standard describes how they are framed, not what a real dog of the breed must look like.

The nine views

Each view has an id, which you use in the API, and a label.

Eight of the views go around the dog: front, three-quarter, side and rear. The ninth is a head portrait. Check one image of your first breed before you build a layout that depends on left and right. You can see every breed from one angle on a view gallery.

The canvas and framing

• The canvas is square.
• The background is transparent.
• The dog is centered.
• The dog fills at most 80% of the canvas, which leaves a margin on every side.
• Standing views share one ground line, so the paws of a dog in the left view and in the rear-right view rest at the same height.
• The life stage is adult, and the pose is standing, except for the head portrait.

The margin is a practical choice. A dog that never touches the edge can be scaled, rotated a few degrees or given a shadow without clipping. The shared ground line means a row of different breeds looks like it stands on one floor, with no manual alignment.

File formats and sizes

Preview files are served under /img/... with a one-year immutable cache header, so browsers and CDNs can keep them. Full-size files are meant to be downloaded once and stored on your side. Do not hot-link the API from a page. Previews may be hot-linked. See pricing and the license for the terms.

Naming in the API

An image is addressed by three parts: breed, variant and view.

/api/v1/images/{breed}/{variant}/{view}

• {breed} is a slug, such as golden-retriever or samoyed.
• {variant} is a color slug, such as fawn, or the word default for the breed's main set. A variant's kind is color, pattern or coat.
• {view} is one of the nine ids above.

A preview request redirects to the WebP file:

curl -I "https://dogimage.dev/api/v1/images/pug/fawn/front?size=512"

That returns a 302 redirect. The size can be 512 or 1024, and 1024 is the default. The full-size PNG is requested with size=full and needs a key, so run it from a server, never from browser code:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOG_IMAGE_API_KEY" \
  "https://dogimage.dev/api/v1/images/pug/fawn/front?size=full" \
  -o pug-fawn-front.png

To find every valid breed and variant slug, read the breed list. Asking for an unknown breed, variant or view returns a 404 that lists the valid choices.

Why one standard helps

A product that shows many breeds has a consistency problem before it has a data problem. Pictures from many sources differ in crop, angle, light and background, and each difference becomes work for you.

With a fixed standard:

• Layouts are predictable. Every image is square, so a grid has no per-item sizing rules.
• Backgrounds are not your problem. The transparency lets you place a dog on a card, a map or a print layout in any color.
• Comparison is easier. Two breeds shown from the same view, with the same framing rules, are simpler to compare than photos taken at random angles.
• Code is simple. The nine ids are fixed, so a viewer can loop over them and never ask which angles a breed has.
• Every set is checked. Each set passes an automatic check of its nine views before it is published.

The standard does not give you puppies, action poses or real photographs, and it is not a breed standard from a kennel club. If you need those, look at other dog APIs.