php resizer (web based)

[PaulGrimshaw]

Hi,

I want to have my site resize product images on the fly so that I can resize larger/smaller depending upon the resolution size. For example, at res 1024 it will resize my image to width 400px. (unless image is smaller in which case nothing is resized).

I have found a couple of phps that do this, but wanted to find if anyone has any recommended ones they use. An additional "watermark" feature that is put on would be cool also.

I am not sure whether this is best done on the server/on the fly or by actinic making the images and then uploading them (and some java deciding which to pick). Whats technically better?

Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Paul.

[pinbrook]

Personally I don't like on the fly resizing as the result doesn't always look very good, plus you have the extra processing happening on the page

i'd always go for pc processing and upload

[NormanRouxel]

I posted some PHP that runs at page compile time to process the product image and resize it to a required size. It would work by replacing the image with a new resized-<filename>jpg one. The idea here was that you could use images of any size and this add-on to Actinic would do the resizing before uploading the site.

It would be trivial to extend this to create 2 or even 3 different sized images. Some server side PHP or client-side JavaScript could then return the appropriate image as required. This wouldn't really hurt your client-side bandwidth much but you'd need room on the server for the extra images.

The example code is in the Advanced Guide. It could be improved (to determine that the resized image already exists and not do the work again unnecessarily for example).