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Images
I hope I’m posting this is the right area. I work for a educational toy company and many f the people who carry our product want images of the product for their website but each one has different size requirements, Is there any software that would resize images at a customers request? Ideally a customer would be able to pick all the images they want (The images re all squared off to a consistant size such as 2000 x 2000 pixels), and then put in the size they want them (Such as 555×500 pixels) and the software would resize them and download them.
Any ideas? I spending way too much time resizing these 100s of images for customers.
Thanks!
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13 Replies
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The easiest thing I should think would be to just have the largest image posted and then each user can scale that down to their own needs on their own software. You don’t even need photoshop for that.
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Thanks, and of course that would be the best option if our customers would do that. The fact is, the customers want us to do that if we want to them to carry our product.
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Well, photoshop has a powerful tool called batch actions. You can program and save a custom action to apply changes to one or any number of images, and re-use the action as often as you like. It takes a 2-hour job and turns it into a 2 minute job.
For example, you can make a batch action to automatically scale and save off as many different scaled versions of an image as you wish, and save them to a folder. You could save those folders to a public drive and let your customers navigate to the size they want to download.
Though if they are too technically inept to scale an image by themselves, I’m not sure they can navigate your folders:-P
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Thank Mark. I use Photoshop batching all the time and I know about batching. I am looking for customer something I can put on my ftp site that will allow customers to resize and download images.
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What’s easier than a gallery or folder of pre-sized images? You could batch the photos and put them into a Flicker account or something for the front end, each one can have the pixel dimensions in the name of the file, then they can just click on the one they want, boom, done. I think you’re going to find more expense and complexity in any kind of custom app that scales for them on the fly, individually. If they have to tell an app what size they want before they get a scaled copy, how is that different/better than pulling down the pre-scaled one from a folder/gallery? I thought most web authors used somewhat conventional sizes for thumbnails and etc.? I don’t mean to sound so contrary, I just think you’re looking for a more complicated solution than you might actually need.
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Yeah I’m with Mark… I just don’t think there is anything that will do exactly what you want… which if I’m reading this right would allow a customer to instantly download an archival image automatically saved and re-sized to the exact previously-unknown custom specs that they want.
I just don’t think that there’s going to be a one-click solution available for anyone. Someone is going to have to do a few clicks and a little bit of the work on one end… either you or the customer.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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We’ve got a few issues with doing that. First, we have a choice, resize the images for each customer or not have them carry our product. We require an agreement to be signed, so the images would have to be password protected. Another is our images are getting updated all the time, so if I was to put up 6 different sized images, each size would have to be updated.
I do appreciate you guys help. Maybe I should start a company that offers this service.
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At the risk of making a pest of myself, forgive me for asking, but, if the pictures eventually end up on public, commercial sites, illustrating product, what’s the point of protecting them? Protecting them from what, being seen? Because getting them seen as widely as possible is the point, isn’t it? And once published to the web, anybody can copy them. I can understand embargoed images that are to be held back until a certain date passes, like a trade show or special premiere event. Is that the only real security issue?
When people tell me something is that way “just because” , I just can’t help myself and I get a bit argumentative. But it’s not personal. it’s just part of my problem-solving process to question assumptions.
Secondly; MAN, your customers are not very accommodating or flexible people, it seems. I don’t envy your task.
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That is a question I can not answer. If it were up to me… I;ve been looking around and there are a few Flicker type companies that are geared more towards companies such as ours. I’ll look into them, My hopes were there would a something like “Portfolio Browser” that also could resize the images. I’ll keep doing it myself until I find a better way. Thanks guys!
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Good luck, then. Please DO give an update if/when you find the solution you were looking for.
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