Resizing pictures..

[Brandon Martus]

Anybody see any issues with me going through and resizing all of the images in the gallery to a maximum of 1024x768? I'd also put something in the upload script to resize them on upload, as well.

Just wanted to get other opinions before I went ahead and did that.

I also thought about just resizing the pictures via html, based on a personal setting. You could choose 'I want all pictures to be a maxmium of ___ x ___ and the page would resize accordingly. Not sure if that is any better than just resizing them all to one set size.

I'd like to to get some opinions before I do anything..

[Joe Ross]

[quote=Brandon Martus]
I also thought about just resizing the pictures via html, based on a personal setting. You could choose 'I want all pictures to be a maxmium of ___ x ___ and the page would resize accordingly. Not sure if that is any better than just resizing them all to one set size.[quote]

The problem with resizing them in HTML is that you must still download the full size, so it hurts people on dialup. The nicest solution as far as users would be to dynamically resize them (can libgd do this?). However, that would severely increase server load, so that's probably not the solution.

I would be happy if everything was resized once and for all to a maximum of 1024x768.

[Alavinus]

downloading time of pictures should be determined primarily by file size. Since the files are limited to 500 kb, I don't think that the overall size in pixels is important.

Brandon, I do think having a maximum size resolution would be nice. Some people are blessed with larger monitors so that what looks normal to them may be huge for somebody else.

[Joel J]

Originally Posted by Brandon Martus

Anybody see any issues with me going through and resizing all of the images in the gallery to a maximum of 1024x768? I'd also put something in the upload script to resize them on upload, as well.

Just wanted to get other opinions before I went ahead and did that.

I also thought about just resizing the pictures via html, based on a personal setting. You could choose 'I want all pictures to be a maxmium of ___ x ___ and the page would resize accordingly. Not sure if that is any better than just resizing them all to one set size.

I'd like to to get some opinions before I do anything..

This is quite a dilemma. Are the images being resized in order for them to take less time to download for users on dialup, or are they being resized in order to allow users with varying screen sizes and resolutions to view more of the full image on their screen? If the latter is true, then a simple HTML reduction may be more fitting (yes, the images will look a bit weird, and the user will still have to download the full-sized image, but they would also be able to turn off, lower, or raise the sizing limits on demand). If the prior is true, then go with an actual cap on the max size of the image (1280x1024, though?), or, just combine the two ideas: cap the maximum dimensions of the image, then allow the user to resize that new image to his liking. Just running an image through the processor, without even changing the dimensions usually results in a much smaller image than you started with, right?

[Brandon Martus]

A script is resizing all images in the gallery as I post this. New uploads will not be resized automagically, yet. Anything wider than 1024px or taller than 768px are being resized (keeping aspect ratio in-tact) to fix in the 1024x768 squre. This size may increase in the future along with an option to make them displayed smaller via html size restrictions. For now, though, 1024x768 is our target size.