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Automatic thumbnail creation

Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2003 11:57 am
by leoden
Hi there

My site currently has an online catalogue, by each description is a thumbnail which when clicked ( guess what! ) pops up a large version of the image. This system works absolutely fine. In order to make my thumbnail im simply doing a batch conversion on all my jpgs and reducing the main images by 25%. Then Main Images and thumbs are then put in separate directories and uploaded and displayed as required.

My query is this, Ive noticed in my PHP book that PHP has many image functions that could generate the thumbs for me dynamically from the main image therefore without the need for a directory of thumbnails. Before investigating this I was wondering about performance issues i.e would is be better for me to leave the system as is, or would there be a benefit from letting PHP generate the thumbs.

Thanks in advance

Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2003 12:05 pm
by markl999
I'd leave it as it is. If you get PHP to do it then you'll just introduce extra overhead. i.e checking if a thumbnail exists, if not generate it and all this whilst the user waits for the page.

Most 'systems' that do this leave the thumbnailing to something 'external' like ImageMagicks convert as they are designed to do this sort of stuff ;)

Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2003 12:09 pm
by leoden
Thanks, Ill leave it then, I suppose I was just being picky!!

Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2003 12:11 pm
by markl999
Well that's just my opinion on it, i might be wrong and others might tell you PHP is better for doing it ;) I'd wait for more opinions first before deciding just in case i'm mad!