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kprobbins
16th of December 2002 (Mon), 15:02
I love this sytem. It's the only worthy of using on our Web site, and I'm not complaining, but I do have a suggestion.

Instead of having to run the Photoshop action and upload all the file versions and setting paths and all that jazz, what might be easier to do -- and probably easy to integrate given the wizardry I see in this program's back-end already -- is to use ImageMagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/) (which is open source and under the GPL) or even the PHP GD to resize photos on the fly to create thumbnails.

You could set this to store them in a 777 directory for thumbs and microthumbs, but for the different image sizes and qualities and styles, etc., you could have an options panel integrated into the EE Utitlities that the user could define for resolutions and sizes, such as "JPEG-10, resized to 40% of original" save those settings in the db and allow the user to name them whatever he or she wishes. You could also easily add the functionality of which photo styles would be accessible to which exhibits as definable by the Exhibit Editor.

Another advantage would be to have Site/User Logo files that could optionally be overlayed on each image as it's fed to the browser, possibly based on the photographer name or applied individually based on an override for each photo in the photoeditor. Sites, such as Getty Images (http://creative.gettyimages.com/) do this with rights protected files. I'm sure, since this system seems to be geared for the avid photographer, that this is somethingthat would be of interest to many users. I also know that ImageMagick can do this and setting the positioning of such file overlays is relatively simple.

****, if I knew more about PHP, I'd offer to work on it myself, but I'm just a hack, figuring out small bits and pieces here and there. From what I can tell, though, ImageMagick can run from the command line, so you could probably get it functioning through PHP. Other options are Magick++, PerlMagick and JMagick.

Here are some examples of what ImageMagick can do:
http://www.imagemagick.org/images/examples.jpg

Here is a book with info on using ImageMagick with PHP4:
http://www.wrox.com/books/1861007647.htm

I hope this inspires some folks to work on integrating this kind of feature.

Cheers,
KPR

PS: Thanks for creating this in the first place. Did I mention it rocks?

Hal Davey
16th of December 2002 (Mon), 16:56
http://www.snipe.net/geek/toolz/imagemagick.php?show_source=yes
This site has some sample php code using imagemagik.
cheers,
HalD

Hal Davey
16th of December 2002 (Mon), 17:16
More goodies. This code produces thumbs for you en mass.

HalD

Pekka
16th of December 2002 (Mon), 18:06
Hi,

All decent image manipulation functions require GD Library or Imagemagick which are not pre-installed in majority of virtual servers. That is why I have so far concentrated only on features that benefit visitors (browsing, speed, usability, expandability) and daily editing and features that work on plain PHP installation without any extra modules. After 1.3 is out I will direct my efforts in creating some options for image upload, resize and sharpen so those with fully equipped servers can do that online.

kprobbins
17th of December 2002 (Tue), 00:01
Hey, no worries or hurries. Your work rocks the house. It was just a suggestion.

And I just thought of another: email postcards.

Wish I knew how to do this ****. I feel so inadequate. I need to go punch a wall to re-affirm my manhood.