Automated Thumbnailer?

[mediumwell]

Is there a module that allows the administator to only have to upload one image and have miva create the thumbnail on the fly. This is how other e-commerce systems work (OSCommerce, x-cart).

I like the way you can have two different images for the large and for the thumbnail, but it would be nice to have the option to only have to upload one image. The "thumbnailer" could be configured to resize all thumbnails to a specific width and/or height.

I'm in the process of converting over a couple of sites to Miva 5 (I love Miva 5 BTW). The only problem is that these clients update their products themselves and they've gotten used to only having to upload one image, and they don't know Photoshop.

Thanks for any help that can be provided.

Matt

[PCINET - Andreas]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

No, I didn't see a module like this but writing one shouldn't be that hard.

[d_host]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

All you'd need on the server is ImageMagic or gd - two very common Linux libraries that allow you to manipulate images very easily in scripts, modules, or command line. It would be trivial for Miva to add support for it natively in MM...

[papi34]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

image quality of the thumbnail on the fly would suffer though

[d_host]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

It doesn't have to be on the fly... You just create it once when you upload the full image, and let the system create a thumbnail and save it with a new filename.

[Brandon MUS]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

I haven't had the greatest results with using dynamic image generators. I get much better results (file size and quality) using Photoshop directly. I didn't mess with it much, but I also didn't see an equivalent to Adobe's "Save for web" using gd2.

[d_host]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

Photoshop will always be better than a simple free tool. But, if your intention is to generate thumbnails that are no more than ~100 pixels wide or tall, the quality is going to be more than adequate.

The Photoshop option "save for web" is simply specifying the percentage of JPG compression or number of colors in GIF palette - which you can do with ImageMagic and gd libraries just fine. It's not called "save for the web" obviously - you have to specify the percentage of compression you want to apply to the new image (hint: look for the compression_level option).

[kayakbabe]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

I've found that ImageMagik does a much better job than GD for compressing and creating thumbnails. Though I do set the bicubic compression, and I read the original file to see how much compression it had in the first place. If it was a lot.. then I don't compress jpgs as much. if it was none. well even 60-70 % looks awesome. I think most people who have seen bad results with auto thumbnailers didn't exploit the full availabilty of the libraries. You don't have to accept the default and you can tweak or manipulate the settings available. Of course, manually doing it in photoshop will give the best results. But, even on photoshop you have to play with it to get the very best results.


I do this auto thumbnail thing on all my php based retail websites. If the admin doesn't upload a thumbnail, then one is generated for them. This allows them to make much nicer thumbnails that highlight a particular aspect of the product (these targeted thumbnails actually work better and convert more). But admin doesn't have to do it if they do not want to. This allows the store owner to get their products up quickly and later revise as they wish.

I too would really like to see an auto thumbnailer available for Miva 5.5.

Anyone want to go in together on the expense to have the module created?

ideally it would use imagemagik if it is available then default to the GD library if it isn't. Almost all LAMP installations nowdays have the GD installed and just slightly less have Imagemagik.

[Capt'n Morgan]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

Any more discussion on this?
It's on the top of my clients wish lists.
Actually, it's on my list, so that I don't have to explain to them how to resize images!!

[virtualkiwi]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

I'd love to see this as a native function in Mivascript. It's one of the few things I can't do easily that can be done with PHP.
Mivascript already has a function that can load an arbitrary file into a variable, and save a variable to a file, so all that's lacking is a function to manipulate that variable if the content is image data.
I'm sure it could be done in Mivascript, but a pure C/C++ function would probably be way faster.

Ideally, in addition to simply resizing, it would also be nice to have a basic crop function, eg specify top, left, width and height, to crop from original image.

I might even be prepared to donate a modest amount if it would help to get this implemented as a standard feature in Mivascript/Empressa.

[tbogus]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

if any solution were to be developed, the developer would keep in mind that 'appropriate' ecommerce thumbnails should be available in squared dimensions - meaning that padding would have to be added automatically for disproportionate images - so the thumbnail was always 100 x 100 and kept image constraints intact.

Also - having the ability to change the style of the displayed image is always nice for the site.

Great idea, though.

[KCSVEN]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

Auto Thumbnails,
I would love this and have implemented it on my own for now, though in a less than optimum way, however, in my search to accomplish this I learned a few things. I found that being a costume business the google image search can be just as lucrative as the regular search and sites that autosize have an easier time ranking, it seems, which makes sense as the same image is linked from different pages instead of 2 different images. What I did was set a fixed image size for the category page template
(e.g.: img src="&mvte:product:image;" width="92" height="150)
, of course I had not optimized the full size images as the same size width-wise so this has caused some distortion for the thumbnails which i will have to fix manually by re-editing the larger photos but going forward that should not be an issue. However, you do need the thumbnails uploaded as well as different pages use it, like my search page, for example. I'm sure several other places the thumbnail may get used and if you remember where they all are and change them not a problem but adds some complexity to any module.

The negative is possibly slightly slower page loads though in this day and age of broadband I have not noticed any slowness by doing this using a cable connection and also a slower DSL connection.

[tbogus]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

FWIW: We use a series of batch scripts in Macromedia Fireworks (yeah - it just works better...) to get all of the thumbnails you see on our site...

http://lightingbygregory.com/lightin...y/quoizel.html

[PCINET - Andreas]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

It looks like there is a real demand for a module. We decided to give it a shot and build one :) We will keep you posted and let you know when to sign-up for a beta version.

Meanwhile consider our other services like getting ready for the holiday season and upgrading your design or adding new functionality.

[Capt'n Morgan]

Re: Automated Thumbnailer?

That's great, Andreas! Looking forward to seeing that!