What are the Pros and Cons to each image transform technique? In Craft you can do two types of image transforms:

1. Control Panel Transforms:

Via: Settings → Assets → Image Transforms


2. Inline Transforms in your Templates

I’m currently using 100% inline transforms as they can be version controlled and seem to work better across different dev environments.

Are there any benefits of using Control Panel Transforms over using Inline Template Transforms in your Templates?
Both methods essentially do exactly the same thing to the image however there are two advantages to pre-defining them in the control panel:


You can just call a transform handle in your templates instead of having to define the whole transform model
They are then available to be used in supported field types e.g. in the Rich Text field type you can select an existing image transform when inserting an image


As you already mentioned the advantages that I can see to defining them in the templates are version control and the lack of needing a database.

I've started defining them all in the templates for the development phase and then when we move to staging I go and add all the ones we're using to the control panel.