Friendly URL for images - image

Question

Please suggest me what to put into .htaccess file.
I have PNG, GIF, JPG images on server http://domain.tld/images/anyimage.anyextension
Want to make URLs more friendly like a http://domain.tld/anyimage.anyextension
This I have now. First two strings change links as described. But last string doesn't change it back for server.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/images/(.+)(\.gif|\.jpg|\.png)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^image/(.+)$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/(.+)$ /images/$1 [L]
If I add
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([^/.]+\.(png|gif|jpg))$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/image/%1 -f
RewriteRule ^([^/.]+\.(png|gif|jpg))$ /image/$1 [L,NC]
Right after previous query string rule then images don't open. If before there's no problem. What it could be? Do you have an idea how to fix it? The last string RewriteRule ^/?(.+)$ /?$1 [L] cause this conflict
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /\?([^\ ]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ /%1? [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/?(.+)$ /?$1 [L]

Answer 1

Not sure how that makes it more friendly, aside from it being shorter. You can try adding this to the htaccess file in your document root:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([^/.]+\.(png|gif|jpg))$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/images/%1 -f
RewriteRule ^([^/.]+\.(png|gif|jpg))$ /images/$1 [L,NC]
Then you can change all of your links from http://domain.tld/images/anyimage.anyextension to http://domain.tld/anyimage.anyextension
The first condition checks to make sure the request is for anyimage.anyextension, as long as the extension is a case-insensitive png, gif, or jpg.
The second condition checks to make sure the requested image actually exists in the /images/ directory.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /images/(.+)(\.gif|\.jpg|\.png) [NC]
RewriteRule ^image/(.+)$ /$1 [R=301,L]
This redirects the browser to the non-/image/ URL. There's 2 completely different things going on here. One deals with the browser and the other deals with content on the server. See the top part of this answer that explains how they are different.
The rules that you have won't work. First:
RewriteRule ^/(.+)$ /images/$1 [L]
will never match. URI's used to match against the regex of a RewriteRule in htaccess files have the leading slash removed, so no URI is going to start with a /. You need to get rid of it.
Secondly, once you do, you'll get a 500 internal server error because your rules will cause an internal infinite loop. You need to match against %{THE_REQUEST} to ensure that a browser is actually requesting a URL with the /images/ path in it, not what has been internally rewritten.