• Registered: 2006-08-04
  • Posts: 3

Topic: Thumbnail 'stretching'...?

As a newbie here, I hope this has not been addressed (did read all the thumbnail post - I think)...

In the v1.7.1 the thumbnail size was smaller (45x45), however, if a thumbnail was not the exact size, i.e. 45x20, then the thumbnail would be 'padded' with the frameColor.

What I have found in v1.8 is that the new thumbnail size (65x65) insist on these setting, in effect stretching a thumbnail that is less out until it reaches 65 on either direction. So, in my case, I have a thumbnail that is 65x32 (8x4 picture), this will be stretched to 130x65, then 32 pixels on both sides will be cropped. The result is a very ugly looking thumbnail (due to the stretching).

Hope this made some sense...

Based on this - assuming it is correct - here are my questions:
1 Is there a way to avoid this stretching?
2 If not (1), would I have to convert all my thumbnails to a 65x65 size format (most likely pad the thumbnail with the frameColor) myself?
3 If so (2), how do you do that in an automatic fashion (I use Photoshop)?

Please advise...

BTW - Felix, thank you for this product, and thank you again for disabling the print function... :D

  • Felix
  • Site Admin
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  • Registered: 2006-03-16
  • Posts: 4,395

Re: Thumbnail 'stretching'...?

Hi Cristian,

you are right: the way thumbnails images are handled is different in v1.8. Thumb images are scaled proportionately to fit the 65x65 'window'. Non-square images are then cropped to fit. This gives the best results for mis-sized images. However, scaled-up images may look blurry.

The solution is to use thumb images that have the shortest side set to 65px long. So for tall images: width=65, height >= 65 and vice versa for wide images.

buildgallery.php will do this automatically for you. I dont have a photoshop action to do this. Anyone have one handy?

Felix Turner
SimpleViewer Support Team.

Felix's Website

  • Registered: 2006-08-04
  • Posts: 3

Re: Thumbnail 'stretching'...?

Felix,

Thank you for getting back with me...

I use Photoshop, but I guess I could use Picasa to create the thumbnails. Most of my proofing galleries are 600x400, some are 600x600 (collages), and even fewer are 600x300 (cards). Based on this, I think that if I specify the thumbnail width/height to be 130 in the index.tpl file add-on for the SimpleViewer Template, then in the 'worst' case (600x300) I would get a thumbnail of 130x65.

This then would still crop the image, but no 'stretching' would occur, and the thumbnail would not appear to be blurry.

Since most applications (in my humble opinion) 'scale-to-fit'/'keep-aspect-ratio' when creating thumbnails (i.e. selecting 65x65 output for a thumbnail would create a thumbnail of 65x32 if the input image was 600x300), if might be a good ideas to bring back the feature in v1.7 that did not 'stretch' the image, but rather added the 'missing' pixels with the frameColor color.

Of course, this is just my humble opinion.

Thank you for your response, you have a GREAT product.

Looking forward to update my website to the new version (hopefully over the weekend).

Best regards,