creating thumbnails

seeking software that ...

[fashezee]

I will have the user upload certain images that I need resized and optimized.

The resized image will be a thumbnail; does anyone have any experience in doing
such a thing? If so, can you suggest me a software I can use; and the pros and cons
I should be aware of?

[mivox]

If you're going to be resizing a large number of images all to the same thumbnail size, you'll want a graphics program with "batch processing" capabilities... so you can just point it at the directory the images are stored in, and have it convert them all at one go. Huge time saver.

The other option is to install some kind of server-side image processing script, so the images are automatically saved in thumbnail format on the server when the original is first uploaded.

[fashezee]

server-side image processing script

This is what I hope other members can shed some light on; anyone have any
experience using a server-side script? How well does the script optimize the image?

[d_fused]

Hi there.

PHP can help you do this, it is quite easy, but as far as I know, it will only resize the image without reducing file size.

Another option is using Java, but then you will have to pay someone quite a lot to write and compile the scripts, not to mention the fact that there are not many shared hosting companies that offer Tomcat installed.

d_

[mivox]

The Perl module ImageMagick is one technique I've heard/seen a lot about. MoveableType blog software has an available image upload/resize function that utilizes ImageMagick.

There are quite a lot of scripts for that sort of thing over at hotscripts.com, but I haven't tried any of them so I can't be too helpful there... ;)

[jatar_k]

you think we php folk wouldn't have something lying around ;)

Bag-O-Tricks for PHP II [webmasterworld.com]
msg 29

Birdman to the rescue!

I have a expanded, chopped version of this and it works very well.