Image quality settings...

[Datagg]

If i changed it to say 85%, does optimizing occur to what is already optimized (on site), or would it effect only newly added images? - I ask as, i optimized images today with my own image program then FTP'ed back up.... Then I recalled the image quality setting (duh).. Don't want to bork up images doing it twice.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Image quality settings...

It only impacts new images.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Image quality settings...

so how can we refresh the image machine generated images?
If we know we have some generating to be 100 wide or 100 high maximum, the image names get the dimensions tacked on to their name... so the generated images will have x100 or 100x within their filenames....
can we just go deleted all those generated images?
Will the store regenerate them when someone view them next?

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Image quality settings...

There's an Image Management tool you need to delete them through to make sure they get deleted from the database and therefore regenerated. It's under Utilities.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Image quality settings...

How so i use the image management tool to regenerate?
I found lots of references in the forum about regenerating but no instructions and there isn't a 'regenerate' button within the image management.

I know I do not want to get rid of unreferenced images... because I have staff using an empty product to put up images for use on the SFNT each month for promos. those images will not be in any image field in the database but they are in the store graphics folder with all the other product images.

Does 'delete resized' actually look at filenames in the image and additional images fields, and delete them?
or does it look for _nnnXnnn and delete any file names that look like they were resized? if it only looks at the filename, i can't use that some of our promo images are named that way and I can't risk deleting them.

"delete selected" gives me questions too.. does it remove them from the database? or just from the graphics folder on the server?
This really wouldn't work for me to delete about 5K of images though, so even if it does just remove from the graphics folder.. it probably isn't very useful for 'regenerating' all resized images in the store.

Where does the reference count come from? it is number of products that use that image.. or just total number of times it appears in the database in any field? (this would catch those promo images actually being used on SFNT, and some example graphics on some how to pages--that I must keep).


AFter all those questions.. can you tell me how to regenerate only the image machine generated images?

[Datagg]

Re: Image quality settings...

What I did was just downloaded the image folder, compressed, ftp'ed back up replacing originals... Then the question became, what of new images as i cant download image folder anymore to compress as that would re compress the images already done... So, what I am doing is when new images sent up for a completed product, I just open browser, then slide the images over from screen to my compression program. Then just compress, and all saved with same name then just simply re-upload them back to replace the ones that were already generated when product set up.... I found this works better at compressing them than even setting the image quality settings. probably because my images are huge at first, then compressed and placed in a blank..So all the generated images just work better when manually compressed.

[Eric Foresman]

Re: Image quality settings...

Hi Kayakbabe

1, the image management tool dose not regenerate any images. Resized images are generated the first time someone goes to that product.

So in order to regenerate resized images, all you have to do is delete the resized images from the products you would like them regenerated for, and then wait. Once someone goes to the product the images will get generated.

2, delete unreferenced is useful for cleaning out images that belonged to products you have already deleted.

Only the images that show up in the image management list, and have a reference count of 0 get erased in this process.

The reference count is the number of products that are using that image.

When in image management if you click on the link for any image, the image detail window will display. This shows you a preview of the image and a list of any resized images that exist for that image. When you delete resized images, its this list that Is used to identify the images that get erased.

3, delete selected, will delete the image from your store completely. From the server, from the product and from the database.


Steps on how to regenerate resized images.

1, go to image management
2, check the checkboxes for the images whose resized images you would like to regenerate.
3, click the delete resized button
4, click ok in the confirm dialog.

Now that all the resized images are properly deleted, the next time some one visits the product that the image is attached to, the resized images will be regenerated.

hope this helps

-Eric

[JimRockford]

Re: Image quality settings...

How do you prevent the Image Machine from auto generating photos that are smaller (dimensionally) yet are significantly larger (# of kb)? I have a 60 kb 500x750 photo which is being generated into a 117kb 250x375 photo.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Image quality settings...

What did you set your percentage for Jpeg?

[JimRockford]

Re: Image quality settings...

It is set to the default of 100%.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Image quality settings...

The default varies based on new installs vs legacy installs. Since we don't change anything in the software when we can avoid it that would alter past behavior, any installation that happened prior to this feature (the ability to control this setting) is left at 100%.

I suggest changing it to 80 and see what you think? We often see files shrink dramatically even if it's just lowered to 95.

[JimRockford]

Re: Image quality settings...

Just so I understand what this setting does, is it only affecting the files generated by the image machine? That is, will my original file be changed? This is confusing to me, because I want my images to be 100% of what I uploaded, not 100% of what they "could be". As such I would expect the image machine generated files to be 100% of the quality of the base file, i.e. the same quality. In that case, since the image machine files are dimensionally smaller they would also be a smaller file size (same quality, smaller dimensions = smaller file size). Bottom line this is not intuitive, at all. So what is this setting really doing, and will changing it impact any of my other jpg's?

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Image quality settings...

Correct it will only impact FUTURE images created by the Image Machine and nothing else.

If you want to regenerate images you've already created with the Image Machine, you'll need to use that tool to delete old Image Machine images.

[kayakbabe]

Re: Image quality settings...

100% is super duper overkill. Change it to 75 or 80 percent. I go with 75% on my site.
Then go into your admin, utilities, image management, select the image you want to regenerate and delete resized images.


New resized images are generated from the originals when the resized ones are missing. Miva checks when a screen is loaded.
So go poke around on the customer side of your website to regenerate those resized images... one visit per page will do it.
That very first page load will be a little slower while those image are resized and created.

By the way, I don't do this manually. I use a link checker program that emulates a person browsing. It loads the website and follows all the links through it to all the other pages. My site is pretty big and doing it manually would NOT be fun. It's a good idea to do that once a while anyway to make sure you don't have some outdated hardcoded link to a screen that isn't there anymore. (my link checker will verify offsite links too for that same reason).

[Jim Cockerham]

Re: Image quality settings...

I am referring here to a new store using Miva 9 and image machine with the default "main image" type.

I have watched the videos but before I start creating my images I want to be sure I understand the best way to do this.

Can the "main image" be deleted once Image machine generates the required sizes? For example: If my main image is a high resolution image at 2000 x 2000 px, but the largest image that I need for a product is the full size (zoomed image) at 800 x 800 px. Can I delete the main image after image machine generates all the required sizes?
If not I would need a lot of disk space to keep all of the originals or I would have to resize all of the originals in advance, to the max required size, in this case 800x800 to keep the disk usage down.

What's the best practice?