[thelist] Cropping images rather thn "squishing" them

[H. G. Quinn]

You have a deadline, so it may be too late for this, but on the chance...

If you have PS 5.5, you can build pages of thumbnails automatically, as long as
your original images are in a single folder.  The resulting set of t/n's have
consistent dimensions, controlled by your setting of the # of columns and rows for
the page, and the page's size.  The t/n's are placed in rows with the same
topline, and centered within their columns.

To use this feature, place all the images you want to thumbnail into a folder.
Use File, Automate, Contact Sheet II to create snaps of each image that are sized
consistently.  The images are placed in a .psd file, not an HTML file.  To create
the HTML...

Do File, Jump To, ImageReady. In IR, slide out guides to bracket the thumbnails on
top and bottom, left and right.  Then do Slices, Create Slices from Guides.  Using
the Slice Selection tool, click each image slice and change its type to the format
you want output (jpg w/ whatever quality, gif w/ whatever palette, you can mix
them up any way you want).  Then, using the Slice Selection tool in shift mode,
select each image slice, so all image slices are selected.  Do File, Save
Optimized As, and make sure "save HTML", "save images" and "selected slices only"
are checked on, then OK the save (warning -- it's easier to manage the set of
resulting files if you create a new folder and open it as the save target, before
OK'ing the save).

Now, edit the resulting HTML with your favorite editor.  There'll be spacer.gif's
where the image table has white space.  Replace them with whatever content you
want, format the table the way you like it, add your styles, etc.

If you don't like the HTML table IR builds, you can ignore it, and just take the
consistently resized images and place them in your pages

Sounds like a lot of stuff, but if you have PS 5.5, IR 2.0 and DW 2 or 3 (or any
other editor and you're a table whiz), it takes about 10 minutes for each 30
images, with the exception of adding content and styles.

Greg Strange wrote:

> Well, this is a case of getting frustrated with layout and getting worried
> about impending deadline and generally flipping out because I thought about
> how much time it was going to take to crop everything in Photoshop.
>
> I am trying to do a bunch of thumbnails for a storyboard.  Some pictures are
> oriented landscape and others portrait.  I wanted to just shrink the
> landscape ones a little to fit onto the page.  I had remembered someone on
> the list talking about how height tags were not a good idea and after
> someone pointed out that tip for images, I realised that the caveat was said
> in reference to tables.  Of course, this seems so ridiculously obvious now.
>
> I had looked at doing layers in the browser to cover part of the pics but
> quickly realised I was going to spend a lot of time on something that was
> going to be hit-or-miss t best.
>
> I apologise for taking up everyone's time.
>
> Greg Strange

Cheers,
--
Heather Quinn
hgquinn at attglobal.net
http://pws.prserv.net/windyhill