Image resizer? Except I'm using the wrong term and don't know the right one.

[khigh]

I thought I needed an image resizer mod, but apparently I need something I don't know the name for.

I have a lot of people who aren't too technical on a small, low budget site. In order to offset storage and bandwidth costs, I disabled image attachments. and made copious tutorials and have given hundreds of hours of individual help about how to use image hosts, but people just don't "get it". They tend to have other areas of expertise.

We can increase our hosting plan a little, and start hosting pictures, at least on a trial basis, but not random MP+ photos - something like 640x480, 800x600, etc. While I can limit the file size and have a default/max image size, and it looks like resize images for the screen, I'm trying to resize images for storage.

My non-technical people are facing the same hurdles when they're just flatly rejected from uploading a camphone pic of say 1.7MB that they're supposed to go edit to a predetermined size as they are in just using a hosting service, which kind of defeats the purpose of trying to allow attachments.

What I need is an interface along the lines of "Upload whatever you got on your drive and we'll deal with it". Then store it as a sub MP image on the host.

What should I be searching for, because I just keep crapping out?

Thanks for looking

[Gwenwyfar]

So you want something that resizes the images automatically when they are uploaded as attachments to a predefined limit?

I've been wanting something similar myself, because users keep uploading large pics for no good reason. If no one picks up on this I'll post an update if I find anything or get something working, I think SMF already does resizing for avatars, may not be too difficult to make it work on attachments.

[khigh]

Yes - Just for instance, the last pic I took with my phone is 4032x3024, 5.49mb - way overkill for a forum image.

I'm assuming there's something I'm overlooking that would let the user attach that, but then say "OK, that's ridiculous, let's make it a nice 800px image" but be transparent to the user.

I don't really gain anything by allowing attachments for technology impaired if they have to fight each one individually.

[Gwenwyfar]

Unfortunately I don't think so. SMF 2.1 has something similar but I'm not sure if it resizes the original file, according to the description it only reduces the display size on the topic.

How big is your forum? If you don't get too many pictures it could be easier to resize images yourself until you can put a better solution in place (since I imagine it must be time consuming to explain to people how to do it, if they are not familiar with technology).

[khigh]

I just assumed it was a pretty standard thing.

I think what I'll do is use the tinypic plugin. It seems to work fantastically and the images are still inlined.

The drawback is that since there's no tinypic login, the pics are subject to delete every 90 days if there's no traffic.

So I can run a spider to hit the pics every month and save them locally. then if I ever lose the hosted pictures, run the locals through a batch resizer, host the resized versions, and do a universal replace to all the tinypic URLS.

Not super graceful, but sounds like it may be the most seamless thing for the users

[@rjen]

I think you need this mod: http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2206

Works like a charm: attachments are automatically resized when uploading, and a user does not have to worry about size limits, because the resizing takes care of that...

I am using this one for a while now on 2.0 and I have no complaints...

[Gwenwyfar]

Ah, that should work for me as well, thanks I was initially looking to have different limits for different types of attachments (I have a high limit so people can upload audio, not raw photos), but some people don't pay attention to that. Resizing solves the problem just the same.

This really should be a standard feature.

[khigh]

OK Thanks! I'll check it out!

I'll go ahead and mark as solved in the meantime.

[Jailer]

I think you need this mod: http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2206

Works like a charm: attachments are automatically resized when uploading, and a user does not have to worry about size limits, because the resizing takes care of that...

I am using this one for a while now on 2.0 and I have no complaints...

This mod only works with attached images and not embedded images correct?

[Steve]

Yep. Hence the title and description of it.