It appears that the auto_pad crop mode is currently not implemented or not functioning as expected.

According to the Cloudinary documentation, the auto_pad mode requires the g_auto (gravity) qualifier, along with two of the following: h_ (height), w_ (width), or ar_ (aspect_ratio).

Consider the following example:

import { getCldImageUrl } from 'next-cloudinary';
 
const url = getCldImageUrl({
  width: 960,
  aspectRatio: '16:9',
  crop: 'auto_pad',
  gravity: 'auto',  
  src: '<Public ID>'
});

The generated URL from getCldImageUrl is missing the gravity and aspect_ratio parameters.
Additionally, the console outputs the following warning:

Auto gravity can only be used with crop modes: auto, crop, fill, lfill, fill_pad, thumb. Not applying gravity.

Support for the auto_pad mode would be highly desirable, as it is particularly useful for use cases like product images where maintaining multiple aspect ratios without cropping the subject is important.