Tips Needed for PHP Auto Thumbnails

[tristar]

Hello,

I found out from another poster in this forum that we have gd_library and ImageMagick. Great - but how do I use it?

A client which I set up OsCommerce webstore has 1200 jpg photos of different dimensions/sizes (100x100, 120x80, etc...).

She has tried creating automatic thumbnails using both Photoshop and OsCommerce Admin's "set width/height" but some images look great, others are distorted (squashed).

She actually wants all images to be 100x100 and still maintain their proportions.

There are several OsCommerce contributions which use PHP's ability to automatically create a thumbnail of a jpg (I have not had any success - probably not setting it right).

I tried without success asking for help at OsCommerce forum - thought someone here might offer their workaround this problem.

So, the question is: how can I get PHP to generate automatic thumbnails (100x100), while maintaining the jpegs' correct proportions - in an Oscommerce store?

And if it matters, I'm on server root3

Thanks in advance

[prince]

I don't think you will be able to auto size to 100 x 100 unless the original image is a square. I mean if the original is 200 x 600 and you set it to be 100 x 100 - I think it will always be distorted.

What I did for a client was set the width in oscommerce to be 100 and left the height adjustment alone. This way the images were not distorded (the aspect ratio) stayed the same. But the width was constant for all thumbnails

To do this I just set up the 'configuration' / 'images' options with a constant width but left the height setting at 0

Perhaps they will be happy with just a constant width (and no distortion ?

[tristar]

Hi,

Thanks for the tip. The client tried doing that herself but wants all pictures to be the same height and size 100 x 100.

PHP has the ability to dynamically create thumbnails (on the fly) right on the browser! And Oscommerce has contributions (scripts) that enable this for jpgs.

My problem is I do not know how to set them up properly. If anyone does, please let me know.

Thanks

[Gnuoo]

Hi,
I had been using auto thumbs to a fixed width but I am having real problems with the quality. Some of the thumbnail images are really washed out. so I gave up on it and started using easy thumbs.

Your best bet is to create them in a photo editor that allows resizing without a constraint on image proportions - Photoshop has this feature but this won't get rid of the distortion.

All I can suggest - as how to cut down on how much distortion you get - is to crop them as square as possible before you resize. Not very useful but the distortion won't go away as long as your changing the height width ratios.



Good Luck with it and if you know a way of stopping the autothumbs from washing out some of the images please let me know

Cheers
Graham