How does magento product image caching works?

Question

I uploaded some images to my products and they were visible fine on frontend. I then went and deleted those images from pub/media/catalog/product folder and also deleted pub/media/catalog/product/cache folder. When I open the media cache link of product I now see the default placeholder image. The path I use in my browser is media/catalog/product/cache/ca230af9a56e172d8d63e4842d175bbe/k/a/kars.jpg This is no way the path for the placeholder image. So now the question is:

1. How is magento replacing the deleted image with placeholder image, instead of showing 404?
2. How is the path not showing 404 since I had deleted those folders?

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

Magento has a configuration that allows you to upload a default product image. In case of you not doing that, it uses its own image. On the first request of the image, Magento will process it to adjust the size of the image to the required size and cache it. Even the default images (the Gray Magento logo) go through this process.