HTML resizing of photos - pros and cons

Does it use up a lot of server resources?

[javahava]

we currently have a site that force resize photos using html - does this use up a significant amount of server resources? we are experiencing some server slowdown, and it's tough to pinpoint if this is a contributing factor.

the other alternative is to use imagemagick to make thumbnails, but i would think this is also resource intensive? what do you guys think as to pros cons? thank you!

[tedster]

html image resizing happens on the client machine, not the server.

[rocknbil]

Well if you're resizing DOWN in size I could see how that would draw unnecessary bandwidth. I can't count the number of times I've reworked a site that had pictures displaying at 400 pixels wide, but the actual file was a raw digital shot exceeding 2000 pixels width. Sometimes they're over a megabyte for a 20K photo size!

ImageMagick uses resources but overall it would be major benefit. For the micro-seconds it takes to resize a huge upload to a digestible image, the bandwith savings are well worth it.

[Matt Probert]

HTML "resizing" (I assume by specifying width and height in the img tag) are conducted at the client machine. However, the full image is transfered. All in all, it's a dumb idea!

Far better is to create smaller thumbnails, so that all images are viewed actual size. Best for quality, best for the client.

Matt