Image Placement in 2.0

When you choose “Using Original” the original file will be used. Just resized to the size of the thumbnail.

That’s how it works at the moment. Whether it will stay that way I’m not sure. How would you like it to work?

Ah. If that’s the way it’s supposed to work, that’s fine. I can resize it as needed. I just assumed that “Using Original” meant that it would be the original size when posted.

Honestly I’m not sure that the way I thought it would work is better than the way it does work. It’s easy enough to use as it is.

About the only other thing I’d like to see is a spellcheck for the wysiwyg, but I’m sure there’s a plugin somewhere (or soon will be) that’ll add that function.

Personally, I really would like it to insert it at the original dimensions when you choose “Using Original”.

I also wish you could customize the dimensions it makes thumbnails at.

I am not sure it is better but placind it qith the real original size by default will clearly reduce questions and misunderstandings….

Yeah, selecting “Use Original” should insert the image with original dimensions…

If a large (larger than, ~730 pixels wide) image is inserted with it’s original dimensions it will be awkward to resize it because it will be bigger than the textarea. Not everybody knows how to resize images properly.

“Use Original” should really insert the original size.

The problem with the system right now is: How to know the original size of an image?
Yes, I can resize the inserted thumb, but unless its resized to its original dimensions it will not have the original visual quality.
And there is no way to find out the original dim. in WP.

At one extreme people will be uploading photos from their 4 megapixel cameras, having them displayed at 128×96 and then wonder why they take so long to download.

At the other extreme they’ll be adding the 128×96 sized thumbnail, resizing them to fill the page and then wonder why they get poor quality pictures.

As lynk mentions above, an image will look best when displayed at it’s original size.

Ideally the thumbnail should be generated when the user has decided what size they want their image to be (perhaps when they save their post). There should only be a need for one thumbnail per image, so if the user changes their mind about how big they want the image a new thumbnail can be generated to replace the old one.

Of course it’s never as simple as that, but you get the idea.

I’ve got one other comment about re-sizing images: (I think I last tested it at RC2…don’t remember specifically; I just update my svn code frequently)

I really don’t like messing with the proportions of my images, and the current resize gadget makes it very easy to do that by accident. I would prefer a proportional resize.

An associated problem is that when I make the image too big, the CSS in the default/kubrick theme somehow applies a maximum width to an image, but doesn’t mess with the height. (i.e. 800×600 image ends up displayed 600×600)

And I too think using the original image should default to the size uploaded, and a thumbnail should default to thumbnail sized.

A question to all those in favour of ‘Using Original’ adding the image at it’s original size:

What do you think should happen when the image is bigger than the size of the editor?

whimsy: It sounds to me like they might be browser specific issues. What browser are you using? Have you tried it in different browsers?

As far as I remember, Firefox will resize the image keeping the original aspect ration and Internet Explorer will not.

I’m using Firefox 1.5 (WinXP).

Using the default theme I couldn’t even put in an image 640×480 (which I consider web-sized)…when displayed, it kept the height, but used a different width. I wish I could track down exactly how the CSS and my browser made it happen, but I’m kinda busy right now.

And for some reason, when I tried to put in two images using RC3, after adding the second image I lost the ability to add either to the post. I put three copies of the first image in, then uploaded a second, then couldn’t place other copies–clicking on the image browser images didn’t result in a menu anymore. I might have also hit “close menu” around then too, which could have broken it, but even when I saved and re-edited the post I couldn’t place new images.

As for the question of the image being larger than the editor…that is a hard one….here are the choices I’m coming up with:

1. Warn the user at uploading that it is too big, and offer to down-sample it automatically (similar to thumb generation)
2. Start with it automatically scaled down enough to fit in the edtior
3. Make sure that the UI will allow re-sizing when the handles are outside the editing region
4. Expect the user to know how much to downsample images for their blog, and leave them flapping in the breeze if they blow it.

I am always aware of the size of images I’m using, so I could handle the last one. But I think the second choice would be easiest to implement, and that makes it a good start. Then I would back-fill in choices 1 and 3 as I had time. On the other hand, I don’t know how wordpress would figure out what the maximum width in the current theme. Perhaps there should be a pref for max image width/height, although height doesn’t cause nearly as much grief.

Well, I just looked at it more carefully in the latest RC3 version, and noticed some improvements and other details:

• Now the resizing seems to be proportional
• The CSS seems to be keeping the image within the legal size range for the layout AND keeping it proportional at the same time.
• Placing a non-thumb image still doesn’t go full size, but I did notice that if I do image properties in the editor, click in the filename, and hit enter, it goes to full size.
• Since my test image happened to be too big, I noticed that the UI just put in horizontal and vertical scrollbars which let me get at all the handles for the image just fine.

Now I’m pretty happy with the features except I still wish non-thumbnail images would default to full-sized.

I do wish I had more control of the image upload directory stucture, and could have fun with an image import function.

I also managed to break/lose the image options dialog in the editor, so there seems to be a bug in there somewhere.

Initially I didn’t like the fact that the original size doesn’t post when you select original size.

But when I resized my image there was no loss of quality to it.

I say stick to what it is currently. The biggest problem will be people who can’t resize or optimize images?

Which leads me to my next question.

Do the images get optimized when using this image resize?

Personally I hate having a large image’s dimensions reduced and still retain it’s huge file size. VERY dialup unfriendly. My preference is to have an option to make a true thumbnail (with small file size) inserted into a post that when clicked it pops up the original full sized image. It would also be nice if it allowed right or left alignment options (and maybe hspace).

BytesU, You can change the right and left alignment options by highlighting the image and pressing the “align left”, “align right”, or “align center” buttons or using the quick key shortcuts.

When the file is uploaded it uploads the original file plus it also resizes the image to a thumbnail and optimizes the image at the same time.

The thumb nail is much smaller in filesize.

“My preference is to have an option to make a true thumbnail (with small file size) inserted into a post that when clicked it pops up the original full sized image.”

It already can do this. You just got to insert the image from the ‘Browse All’ tab in the ‘Upload’ area.

Select the Image.
Click ‘Using Thumbnail’
Click ‘Linked To Image’
Click ‘Send to Editor’