[thelist] Also Graphics Related

[John Corry]

|> What Id like to find is something that'll do it server-side so I
|dont have
|> to maintain two sets of images (thumbs and originals).

How much maintenance do images require? I have a make a new photoshop action
for doing this that:
1) adjusts levels according to a saved histogram (specific to that photo
shoot)
2) unsharp mask
3) save a 640x480 jpg for web in 'large' folder
4) make a square thumbnail selection
5) crop
6) resize to 80x80
7) save thumbnail in 'thumbs' folder

Running that action takes roughly 1 second per image and I can go get coffee
while it runs. Image quality is great, as long as I take care to set
everything up right in the action. OK...I don't know if you've gotten enough
information so far, but the collective experience of this list is that, this
(or similar, with the image software of your choice) is the 'best practice'
for this kind of thing. Doing it on the server is not the 'best practice'
for a variety of aforementioned reasons. Rewriting the HTML to force images
to display as tiny thumbnails is absolutely assinine and defeats the purpose
of having thumbnails in the first place.

|> All I want to do is place an image in the appropriate directory and have
|the
|> ASP do the rest.

OK..I don't know anything about ASP, does it *have* to be ASP? I ask because
there's a really cool php app called Gallery
<http://gallery.sourceforge.net> that will meet your needs (though it relies
on a practice that has already been identified as *not* a 'best
practice'...server based image manipulation. It's free. It rocks.

There can't possibly be more to add to this thread, can there?

jpc