Creating Thumbs

[earl_damron]

Sorry to ask such an elementary question, but I want to do this the right way.

I have an image (like a small jpg). How do I create the thumb and microthumb from/for it?

Thanks!

[Pekka]

Hi Earl,

First question would: be what software are you using?
Normally you just record the steps you need to do (resize, sharpen, save) and play that recording back for every new photo.

[earl_damron]

Hi Pekka.

I'm using PS7.

Thanks

[Pekka]

With Photoshop 6 or 7 you have a command for recording your actions in action palette.

Create a new action and give it a name e.g. "resizer".

Open original image.

Then:

Start recording
Take a history snapshot "source"
Resize
Sharpen
Save in correct folder (using Imageready)
Select history snapshot "source"
Resize
Sharpen
Save in correct folder (using Imageready)
Select history snapshot "source"
Resize
....etc until all sizes are done, and then

close original (without saving)
stop recording

Now you have created an action "resizer".

Normally you work with relatively similar size originals, so the resizing can be done in percents, e.g. x: 12% (leave y as it is).
But, if you have very many different sizes to start with, do one resizer for horizontal and one for vertical photos. For those define the size in pixels, e.g. for horizontal thumbs x: 108px (leave y as it is) and for vertical thumbs y: 108px (leave x as it is). This way you keep the thumb size equal and produce a clean looking listing.

You can find out good resize sizes before recording the actions so that you don't have to go back and forth when recording.

Using actions is simple: just select the action and click play icon.

[earl_damron]

Thanks very much Pekka.

I'll give it a go.

[earl_damron]

Hi again Pekka.

Quick question: when I jump to ImageReady, the resized original appears as a GIF. Is this the format I should be saving my originals as for use on my EE gallery?

Thanks

[earl_damron]

Me again Pekka.

Some additional feedback to my other question (about the GIF format).

When I tried recording the action using ImageReady, I couldn't get it to work.

When I stayed in PhotoShop and used the "Save Optimized As..." command in my action, I got it to work. For the actual paths, I used relative paths when recordin the Resizer action, like

..\Resized 25 Percent\
..\Resized 50 Percent\

After recording the action, I opened one of my originals JPGs and ran the action. It seemed to work great. I got two new JPGs, one 25% of the original in the Resized 25 Percent folder and the other 50% of the original in the Resized 50 Percent folder.

Is this the best/right way?

Thanks

[Pekka]

Yes, "Save Optimized As..." is the way to do it. Actually there are no "rules" as long as you get the results you need :)

One more thing: the folder and file names can have spaces in local machine, but in web its always a good idea to used underscores instead of spaces, like "Resized_25_Percent". Imageready converts automatically file names to www compatible, but Photoshop's "Save As..." command does not.

[malum]

If you have Macromedia Fireworks it has the option to take a whole folder of images and thumbnail them to whatever size you like

[malum]

or there is this http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/index.html?1.8c
which is freeware

[Taligent]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this, but a useful feature of Photoshop is under the file menu, Automate -> Batch. This will run an action you specify across an entire folder (and subfolders if you wish), by overriding the "Open" command in your action. This of course requires that when recording your action, you start recording before you open the image file for processing. After preparing horizontal and vertical images in separate folders, just run the batch action appropriate for the photo orientation, sit back, and relax. Just be sure to record "Close" in your action to keep a single image open at a time.

Also, it's a good idea to use ImageReady (File -> Save for web...) to save images destined for the web because it will handle gamma and colorspace adjustments automatically. I work with 16-bit files in AdobeRGB, and the resizing action feeds this file directly into ImageReady, which seamlessly produces a JPEG in 8-bit and sRGB with adjusted gamma if necessary. ImageReady can also produce smaller files because it is not tacking on extraneous information that a web user would never see (thumbnail, colorspace information, etc).

earl_damron, check the right side of the window opened when you select Save for web. You'll find several options for saving file formats, one of which is JPEG. PNG is a good format, but no photofinisher accepts PNGs for printer output so it's not of much use for the high resolution files.

HTH,
Nikhil