@jack you can configure a CDN like that to keep text and image side by side and still get the benefits.

You set the "Pull" to the origin, ie. your domain and reference images in HTML with the CDN domain.

When a image cdn.baty.net/image.png gets requested it gets pulled by the CDN from baty.net/image.png, cached in the CDN and consequently delivered from there.

This is what I would use all the time over seperating image from text.

You have to adapt the image URLs either way. But if you want to stop using the CDN, you point cdn.baty.net to your normal host and it still will work. No copying around necessary.