What this is
ImgWren is a small set of image tools that run inside your browser. Nothing you open here is uploaded. There is no server that receives your files, because the work happens on your own device using the same engine that renders the page.
It is built and maintained by Mustak Momin, working from Kenya. One person, not a company — which is worth saying plainly, because most sites in this category are anonymous.
Why the tools run in your browser
The honest reason is that it is better for you, and it also happens to be cheaper to run.
Most free image tools upload your file, process it on a server, and hand back a link. That means your photograph sits on someone else's machine, governed by a retention policy you have to take on trust. For a holiday snap nobody cares. For a passport photograph — a biometric identity document — it is a real decision, and one people make without being told they are making it.
Doing the work in the browser removes the question entirely. There is nothing to retain because there is nothing to receive.
⚠️ It also has costs, and they are stated on the pages where they apply: the first use of some tools downloads a processing engine, and very large files are limited by your device's memory rather than by a server's.
Where the portal rules come from
Several tools here check a photograph against a specific visa or passport portal's requirements. Those figures are the part of this site that took the longest, and they are the part worth trusting.
Every one was read from the authority that set it — the UK's GOV.UK page, Canada's IRCC page, the US State Department, Immigration New Zealand — and every rule links to the page it came from along with the date it was checked.
The reason for that discipline is that most published photo specifications are wrong. They come from photo vendors copying each other, and the errors propagate: one widely repeated figure for an Indian exam turned out to describe a photograph upload that no longer exists, because the form now captures the photo live through your camera and rejects applications where a printed photo was held up to it.
⛔ Two countries are deliberately missing from those lists. Vietnam and Bangladesh have figures repeated all over the internet that could not be traced to the government that supposedly set them. A wrong photo specification costs someone a rejected application, so they stay out until a primary source can be found. A short sourced list beats a long copied one.
How this is paid for
Nothing here is paid for by you. There are no accounts, no subscriptions, no watermarks and no upsell.
There are currently no adverts. If that changes it will be stated here and on the privacy page in the same change, not quietly.
What is measured
Two things, and they are described properly on the privacy page: a cookieless page-view count that runs for everyone, and Google Analytics, which sets cookies and therefore only runs if you agree to the banner.
Neither can see your images, because your images never leave your device for either of them to see.
Getting in touch
[email protected] reaches a real inbox that a person reads. If a portal rule here is out of date, or a tool is wrong about your file, that is the address — corrections are genuinely useful, because the specifications change and rarely announce it.