Topic: Getting decent Image Gallery thumbnails

[capeinfo]

Hi

I'm really struggling with the Image Gallery thumbnails.  They are too awful!  (See http://capeinfo.com/dev1/directory?sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=4&sobi2Id=15)

All the other applications I've used resize thumbnails to a uniform format using GD Library which is loaded on most servers.

There's more information on how this is done at http://911-need-code-help.blogspot.com/2008/10/resize-images-using-phpgd-library.html, but implementing something like that is beyond my skills.

Can anyone help?  This would be a really useful enhancement to the Image Gallery.

Thanks

[Robert_Vining]

The image gallery currently uses the GD library to resize thumbnails.

There is a setting in the sobi2 configuration menu under Registry Editor to set the quality of images.

jpeg_image_quality

I use 80 which is 80% and it looks pretty good. Give it a try.

[capeinfo]

Thanks for that, but it's not the image quality I have a problem with, it's the format - when you have vertical and landscape formats.  (The link above illustrates that.)

If the Gallery uses GD Library, surely it should be relatively easy to get a uniform format such as cropped to a square?

[Robert_Vining]

next.

[capeinfo]

huh?

[Robert_Vining]

what you linked to does not show the code on how to crop the image to a square... sorry.

I typed 'next' because I meant I was moving on to the next person who was having an issue I can help them with.

This is a feature that you might want to look into having someone create for you, or create it yourself. It's not a widely asked for feature, and not one I personally would use myself.

Looking at your site though, you have plenty of things to fix other than complaining about how awful our gallery plugin is!

[irish melkite]

capeinfo,

I would offer one suggestion - you may be able to add CSS styles of identical width and height to the fields in question -
e.g. 

width: 300px;
height: 300px;

which will square the images.

The problem that I don't think you can overcome is to have it automatically crop (if that's the term you really intended to use) because the program is not going to understand what should be cropped - it's merely going to resize, with the result that you will get images that are obviously elongated and others that are obviously scrunched. Overcoming that requires manually cropping with a critical eye.

Neil

[QMedia]

I'd think this feature would be a nice plus. Merely resizing the images isn't a very good way to go about it. Cropping the image though as for example JomSocial and many other components do is a much neater way and makes the images look great imo

[Robert_Vining]

I'd think this feature would be a nice plus. Merely resizing the images isn't a very good way to go about it. Cropping the image though as for example JomSocial and many other components do is a much neater way and makes the images look great imo

True, and if we were selling Sobi2 for $150 per domain like JomSocial, I'm sure a more robust image gallery could be implemented much more quickly. But since the Gallery Plugin is free, I think it does a great job for what it was intended to do, and it's not a feature that is being requested very often, as evidenced by the fact that 14 months has passed since the last comment on this post.

But thanks for the suggestion.

[QMedia]

A quick search through the forum shows that there are several threads regarding this   But I won't hassle...was just a suggestion in case someone felt up for the challenge:)

For the gallery plugin itself there apparantly exist a hackfix for anyone else wanting this: http://www.sigsiu.net/forum/index.php/topic,17949.0/highlight,gallery+hack.html