diff --git a/src/calibre/web/feeds/news.py b/src/calibre/web/feeds/news.py
index 4acd7fd2ed..ead1e3b56b 100644
--- a/src/calibre/web/feeds/news.py
+++ b/src/calibre/web/feeds/news.py
@@ -472,6 +472,14 @@ class BasicNewsRecipe(Recipe):
         '''
         return url
 
+    def preprocess_image(self, img_data, image_url):
+        '''
+        Perform some processing on downloaded image data. This is called on the raw
+        data before any resizing is done. Must return the processed raw data. Return
+        None to skip the image.
+        '''
+        return img_data
+
     def get_browser(self, *args, **kwargs):
         '''
         Return a browser instance used to fetch documents from the web. By default
@@ -929,6 +937,7 @@ class BasicNewsRecipe(Recipe):
             setattr(self.web2disk_options, extra, getattr(self, extra))
 
         self.web2disk_options.postprocess_html = self._postprocess_html
+        self.web2disk_options.preprocess_image = self.preprocess_image
         self.web2disk_options.encoding = self.encoding
         self.web2disk_options.preprocess_raw_html = self.preprocess_raw_html_
 
diff --git a/src/calibre/web/fetch/simple.py b/src/calibre/web/fetch/simple.py
index 214088841f..c3d3559e2e 100644
--- a/src/calibre/web/fetch/simple.py
+++ b/src/calibre/web/fetch/simple.py
@@ -153,7 +153,8 @@ class RecursiveFetcher(object):
         self.preprocess_raw_html = getattr(options, 'preprocess_raw_html',
                 lambda raw, url: raw)
         self.prepreprocess_html_ext = getattr(options, 'skip_ad_pages', lambda soup: None)
-        self.postprocess_html_ext= getattr(options, 'postprocess_html', None)
+        self.postprocess_html_ext = getattr(options, 'postprocess_html', None)
+        self.preprocess_image_ext = getattr(options, 'preprocess_image', None)
         self._is_link_wanted     = getattr(options, 'is_link_wanted',
                 default_is_link_wanted)
         self.compress_news_images_max_size = getattr(options, 'compress_news_images_max_size', None)
@@ -396,6 +397,9 @@ class RecursiveFetcher(object):
             fname = ascii_filename('img'+str(c))
             if isinstance(fname, unicode):
                 fname = fname.encode('ascii', 'replace')
+            data = self.preprocess_image_ext(data, iurl) if self.preprocess_image_ext is not None else data
+            if data is None:
+                continue
             itype = what(None, data)
             if itype == 'svg' or (itype is None and b'<svg' in data[:1024]):
                 # SVG image