Author Topic: Quick Thumbnail (an online approach) (Read 20995 times)

Veign · « **on:** November 04, 2006, 05:26 PM »

Quick Thumbnail is an online image resizer. This one not only provides resizing by percentage or by pixel but it also allows you to create mulitple resized images in one go.

As this is the first release, there may be things that can be done better but I think its a great start. Over time I may add size options based on user feedback so please let me know how it may be lacking.

Anyone that knows me knows that I like to create application where I think there is room for something better. I also create things that perform a specific function. I'm not too into the swiss army knife approach to application design.

This application falls into the category of do one thing and do it well. Its was created for my clients who have other ventures where they need to convert digital camera images to something more web ready. To help them out I created Quick Thumbnail and decided to share it with everyone else.

Link:
http://quickthumbnail.com/

Enjoy and as always comments welcomed

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** November 04, 2006, 05:39 PM »

very nice; you forgot to say one of the best parts is simultaneous generation of different sizes.

Veign · « **Reply #2 on:** November 04, 2006, 08:25 PM »

simultaneous generation of different sizes
-mouser (November 04, 2006, 05:39 PM)

I like that phrase. Need to use it on the site.

Veign · « **Reply #3 on:** November 04, 2006, 08:59 PM »

oops. I justed fixed an issue where upper case extensions were deemed invalid. It will now recognize both upper and lower case extensions.

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** November 04, 2006, 09:25 PM »

the slider thingy is a bit broken for me (IE6), it looks like the slider knob is on a bar that is centered on screen, but the actual bar is far too much torwards the right:

Screenshot - 11_4_2006 , 9_24_47 PM.png

Veign · « **Reply #5 on:** November 04, 2006, 09:27 PM »

Weird. I need to look into this. Thanx

Veign · « **Reply #6 on:** November 04, 2006, 09:41 PM »

Thanx for finding that one Mouser.

All fixed now.

Does anyone think a 60px option would be a good idea (standard avatar size)?

mouser · « **Reply #7 on:** November 04, 2006, 09:45 PM »

veign,
depending on the computational resources, here's what might be simpler (which is always better!):

just one checkbox, saying:
[] creat versions of this at varying sizes

and then 2 edit boxes for resizing to a specific size.

the "Varying sizes" option should produce a page of resizes of varying sizes, i would suggest something like
10%, 25%, 50%, 75%,
16x16, 32x32, 64x, 160x,240x,320x,480x,640x

The idea being that this will be like a portfolio page where they can visually see what the image looks like in different sizes and choose which they like, rather than having to guess ahead of time what they want.

Veign · « **Reply #8 on:** November 04, 2006, 09:57 PM »

Mouser,
I actually thought of this. The first thought on how to do this application was to create a proof sheet looking page with the varying sizes. The reason I quickly got away from is I feared I would be using way too much bandwidth and the cost might be greater than the money the ads bring in.

I have no problem giving my time away for free creating things (or the result not bringing in money) but I'm just not in a position to have it cost me money.

So, I went with an option were users selecting sizes. I felt that even if they needed to do it again it would still be less bandwidth than a proof sheet.

What I may do, since the picture is stored on the server for 10min, is allow them to quickly resize from the results page with a new, user entered size. The thought being that they would get close, if not spot on, with the first round and then would need only one more resize. They could now visually see that 500px is too large and 250px is too small so they could enter 350px and get that single sized image. The thought would be that 50-60% of users will get it in the first selection and we would get 80-90% in two rounds (the last being a single user entered value).

Oh, and you may have noticed that the percentage slider now goes to 150% to allow enlarging images.

Thoughts?

Veign · « **Reply #9 on:** November 04, 2006, 10:17 PM »

OK.

New feature added:
Quick Resize: Once you've uploaded an image and selected some resize options you can now quickly resize the image to a new user entered size. This allows you to tweak the image size from the uploaded image instead of re-uploading. This new option is at the bottom of the resized image page.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #10 on:** November 04, 2006, 10:47 PM »

Nice work!
This could be less trouble than doing some things directly on my own machine.

app103 · « **Reply #11 on:** November 05, 2006, 01:43 AM »

good quality too

Eóin · « **Reply #12 on:** November 05, 2006, 06:10 AM »

Yep I'm impressed, very intuitive to use

.

Veign · « **Reply #13 on:** November 05, 2006, 10:54 AM »

Thanx all.

Please keep in mind that I thrive on suggestions from users. I feel that I have ideas of how things should work and sometimes can't see other, better methods. So, if you 'want it your way' just ask. I listen.

Veign · « **Reply #14 on:** November 06, 2006, 11:37 AM »

Quick question for everyone. What is the default file size produced from your digital camera?

I want to make sure my size limit does not prevent most non-techie users from resizing their digital camera images (one of the main reasons I put the site up).

Thanx in advance.

tomos · « **Reply #15 on:** November 06, 2006, 12:00 PM »

What is the default file size produced from your digital camera?

do you mean pixels? - I see the limit for QuickThumbnail is 1MB

Olympus c5060: 2592 x 1944 pixels
That makes a file up to 3MB & it's only a 5 megapixel camera, (at highest quality setting though)

Veign · « **Reply #16 on:** November 06, 2006, 12:14 PM »

Is this highest quality setting the out-of-box setting.

I need to come up with a file size limit that covers 95% or so of the images people want to resize without killing me with bandwidth costs.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #17 on:** November 06, 2006, 03:49 PM »

FWIW
Nikon CoolPix 8700.
It defines 'Basic' as 1280 x 960 (1M)
and 'Normal' as 1600 x 1200 (2M)
I don't often use those, though. I certainly might (or lower) if I knew it was destined for the web and I was going to take advantage of your generously-provided site. I think your idea is to allow for people who didn't know that when they released the shutter, though.

Veign · « **Reply #18 on:** November 06, 2006, 07:36 PM »

Thanx for the info.

What I may do is run the site for a month and monitor bandwidth. See if the ads bring in any revenue and whether I'm pushing my servers bandwidth limit. I have no problem buying more bandwidth and pumping up the filesize limit as long as its not costing me out-of-pocket (just not in a place for that).

app103 · « **Reply #19 on:** November 07, 2006, 12:39 AM »

You might want to take into consideration the limits of popular image upload sites like Imageshack...their upload limit is 1.5mb.

Speaking of Imageshack, a nice feature to add might be the option to send an image to Imageshack after resizing. That could be useful for a lot of people. (but it will increase the bandwidth you use)

There is an issue with a few cameras' images not being compatible with your resizer...they generate .bmp files (still under your file size limit though). Might want to consider supporting that.

Veign · « **Reply #20 on:** November 07, 2006, 09:05 AM »

Thanx for the ImageShack link. I will consider the bump up to 1.5MB.

As far as BMP files. The GD object doesn't natively support BMP but I have some code to assist in making it support it. I probably won't be able to have the image stay as BMP and will be forced to convert it to JPG. This is something I will be looking at adding once I find sometime.

The other thing I like about imageShack is the drop down sizes. This might be something I add too. Would be very simple to do. Just need to make sure I have the space in the interface for it.

Thanx again.

app103 · « **Reply #21 on:** November 07, 2006, 09:13 AM »

Converting to .jpg would be fine...more things require something other than .bmp any way, so it would serve a dual purpose by resizing and converting all in one shot.

Veign · « **Reply #22 on:** November 07, 2006, 09:15 AM »

Good point.

Veign · « **Reply #23 on:** November 07, 2006, 10:57 AM »

I added a new sizing option called Standard Sizes. This lets you resize the image to fit a standard size from a predetermined list (see below). So now there are three sizing options; Percentage, Fixed Size (fits the image into a box maitaining aspect ratio), and standard sizes (image is forced into the new size so distortion may occur).

Standard Sizes:
100x75 (avatar)
150x112 (thumbnail)
468x60 (web banner)
320x240 (for websites and email)
640x480 (for forums)
800x600 (15-inch monitor)
1024x768 (17-inch monitor)
1280x1024 (19-inch monitor)
1600x1200 (21-inch monitor)

I also added the security tag to the bottom of the homepage to let user know that I delete the images from the server and the image filenames are encoded so someone guessing an image file name just couldn't happen.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #24 on:** November 07, 2006, 04:27 PM »

Very nice! One can 'mix and match' just about any combination.
It's hard to see how you could improve it much more (unless you can edit out the image of my thumb over the lens).