Thumbnails in IP4.0 Abysmal

[SJ77]

Lots of us run forum based image boards and rely on proper thumbnails being generated in posts.

so far IP Board 4.x is not delivering on that need.
 

[SJ77]

thumbnails are HUGE!!!!

[Stuart Silvester]

You can change them in the ACP to whatever size you would like

[The Jimmo]

Size is admin controlled

[Charles]

Abysmal!

The admin sets the maximum size an image can be. The user can then, if they so choose, change the size of that image in the editor. Example of the same image...

Max allowed size set by admin:

Same image where I chose to make it smaller:

[eshayem]

I have same problem

[SJ77]

setting the max size of an image is NOT a substitution for a proper thumbnail structure.

People who run image boards need small thumbnails to both keep the thread readable and to keep bandwidth in check.

We also need full size images that users can see once they click on a thumbnail.

It's bad enough that image "download (view) count " was removed from the image attachments in 3.4.7 but now there is no thumbnail system in 4.0.

Are we trying to make IPB totally unusable as an image board?

[Charles]

Would you not just set the maximum size of the image view to something smaller?

[The Jimmo]

setting the max size of an image is NOT a substitution for a proper thumbnail structure.

People who run image boards need small thumbnails to both keep the thread readable and to keep bandwidth in check.

We also need full size images that users can see once they click on a thumbnail.

It's bad enough that image "download (view) count " was removed from the image attachments in 3.4.7 but now there is no thumbnail system in 4.0.

Are we trying to make IPB totally unusable as an image board?

​Believe there is a language gap here or something. You have complete control of the size of the thumbnails on your board. If you want all thumbnails to have a max size of 200px, you get do that. If you want them to have a max size of 1,000px you can do that. Anything you want, you can set it as. Setting the max size of thumbnail does not make ALL thumbnails 200px for instance, if the image is 200px or larger in width it will be scaled to that size. But a 150px width image will not be effected.

[SJ77]

I recognize that the issue could be that I am not understanding or that there is some miscommunication. I am hearing 1 setting when I want 2 settings

So allow me to set up how I am understanding this.

Let's say we have a car image forum and someone uploads an 1000 x 1000 pixel image of a car.

If  I set the max resolution to (800px) x (800 px) the image places itself inline in the forum as an 800x800 px thumbnail and when clicked can only be 800x800px.

 

What I want is a max thumbnail size (setting) and a max image size (setting) "2 settings"

I want 100px thumbnails that click open to 800px for this respective 1000px attachment submission.

[Charles]

If you set the max images to 800x800 then that is what is displayed on the screen. If someone clicks it then it will fill the screen to 1000x1000 however big the screen can show. If the user wants to right click and download image they get the full size.

[SJ77]

If you set the max images to 800x800 then that is what is displayed on the screen. If someone clicks it then it will fill the screen to 1000x1000 however big the screen can show. If the user wants to right click and download image they get the full size.

​this is unfortunate,  Why can't we set a max thumbnail size, and a max full image resolution size? Wouldn't that make a million times more sense?

It's like we are trying to combine the thumbnail framework/procedure into the same process/concept as the full size image. They are different things.

I need the ability to have posts with 30 or more small thumbnails ( in a single post)  that when each respective thumbnail is clicked open can be limited to a specific max image size.

[Charles]

I just don't think it ever came up before It didn't occur to us that anyone would want to limit the maximum "click to view full size image" option.

[SJ77]

I have a website with 20K+ active users. some users upload huge images  4MB+

Each image can receive as many as 20K views in a day. If I serve 4MB files 20K times that's a TON of bandwidth.

this is why I need a limit of full size images.

As far as thumbnails I can have 400+ images posted to a single page on any given thread.

It would take forever to load or navigate that thread if I don't have proper small image thumbnails.

Correct me if I am wrong but doesn't IPB 3.4.7  already allow both of these 2 settings? (thumbnail max, full image max) ??

[SJ77]

also as far as I can tell this isn't making thumbnails at all.

yup the following image is the same as the full size after clicking. No thumbnail resizing at all, and no file size compression at all.

this is a problem.

[Aurélio "Baboo"]

IPB 4 should add options to allow images with different resolutions as I did in my board. 
Example: http://forum.baboo.com.br/index.php?/gallery/image/18096-bugatti-veyron-15/

[The Jimmo]

also as far as I can tell this isn't making thumbnails at all.

​Yes, this is something I brought up on the preview board. They are re-sizing the image for a thumbnail via HTML and not creating a new resized image for it.

[opentype]

I want 100px thumbnails that click open to 800px for this respective 1000px attachment submission.

I second this.

A thumbnail should be a real thumbnail – an additionally create image in the target size. Not every forum might need them, but it’s a legitimate request for many boards. 
And there should be a max full image size value – so when larger images are uploaded they get scaled down to the that value and the original image is thrown away to save storage space and bandwidth.  

​

[Mark]

superj707 - you've misunderstood. We totally get that that for sites like yours with lots of images and active users, bandwidth is a premium. IPS Community Suite 4 is actually much more flexible than IP.Board 3 was in this regard - though I can understand how, looking at our settings here, and added confusion from the fact the responsiveness will downsize thumbnails even smaller, it could give someone like you cause for concern

You said you think there should be two settings - one to control the maximum dimensions of the image the gets saved (and is viewable when you click the image in a post), and another to control the maximum dimensions of the thumbnails which are displayed in the post before the user clicks on them. It sounds like you're under the impression the first of these exists, but not the second. It's the other way around, the first sort of exists in the form of file size rather than dimensions, and the second exists (as dimensions) and is what everyone is talking about.

So let's say I'm an admin like you and I want small thumbnails - I can do that. I could set them as small as I like - let's say I set them to 300x300px. If some user comes along and wants to upload a very large file, they can upload anything up to their upload limit (which is in filesize rather than dimensions). What gets uploaded is stored untouched (I'll come on to this in a moment, as I understand you don't like that bit, but stay with me) but what gets shown to me in the post is a 300x300px thumbnail.

What might add confusion to this is that if you resize your browser window smaller than 300px wide, the image will appear to shrink down. This is absolutely not a substitute to thumbnails (which we agree would be silly), it's just a cool little separate feature to stop the page layout breaking on smaller devices.

 

We've set the default thumbnail size quite large, which is why is appears here that we don't even have one at all. This is because on most communities, members rarely upload images, so the bandwidth impact is negligible, and having a nice big image which fills the page generally looks much more beautiful. As I say though, for communities where this is not the case, you have total flexibility.

 

As for resizing the full-size image which is displayed when you click - this currently doesn't happen. As Charles says, it's not something we really thought about, mainly because you can of course control the allowed file-size (which is of course what matters when we're talking about bandwidth, not dimensions) of any uploads. Also, when resizing non-vector images, they can often become scrunched which is undesirable - if a user has chosen to download the full-size image, it would seem incorrect to give them a resized version. So while this is a good idea for a future version, it isn't in IPS Community Suite 4.0.

[The Jimmo]

superj707 - you've misunderstood. We totally get that that for sites like yours with lots of images and active users, bandwidth is a premium. IPS Community Suite 4 is actually much more flexible than IP.Board 3 was in this regard - though I can understand how, looking at our settings here, and added confusion from the fact the responsiveness will downsize thumbnails even smaller, it could give someone like you cause for concern

You said you think there should be two settings - one to control the maximum dimensions of the image the gets saved (and is viewable when you click the image in a post), and another to control the maximum dimensions of the thumbnails which are displayed in the post before the user clicks on them. It sounds like you're under the impression the first of these exists, but not the second. It's the other way around, the first sort of exists in the form of file size rather than dimensions, and the second exists (as dimensions) and is what everyone is talking about.

So let's say I'm an admin like you and I want small thumbnails - I can do that. I could set them as small as I like - let's say I set them to 300x300px. If some user comes along and wants to upload a very large file, they can upload anything up to their upload limit (which is in filesize rather than dimensions). What gets uploaded is stored untouched (I'll come on to this in a moment, as I understand you don't like that bit, but stay with me) but what gets shown to me in the post is a 300x300px thumbnail.

What might add confusion to this is that if you resize your browser window smaller than 300px wide, the image will appear to shrink down. This is absolutely not a substitute to thumbnails (which we agree would be silly), it's just a cool little separate feature to stop the page layout breaking on smaller devices.

 

We've set the default thumbnail size quite large, which is why is appears here that we don't even have one at all. This is because on most communities, members rarely upload images, so the bandwidth impact is negligible, and having a nice big image which fills the page generally looks much more beautiful. As I say though, for communities where this is not the case, you have total flexibility.

 

As for resizing the full-size image which is displayed when you click - this currently doesn't happen. As Charles says, it's not something we really thought about, mainly because you can of course control the allowed file-size (which is of course what matters when we're talking about bandwidth, not dimensions) of any uploads. Also, when resizing non-vector images, they can often become scrunched which is undesirable - if a user has chosen to download the full-size image, it would seem incorrect to give them a resized version. So while this is a good idea for a future version, it isn't in IPS Community Suite 4.0.

@Mark, I think this is a great way to do things. I am fine all down to the thumbnail issue that myself (and a few others) brought up on the preview board that thumbnails aren't re-sized images but in fact scaled down via HTML/CSS. This means each time you load the page, you are loading the full scale image which for a responsive design is a BIG NO-NO. Has IPS given any more thought to this? I know it is a lot asking to do this at this point but just want to make sure it doesn't get overlooked as it is my largest concern w/ IPS4, especially along the lines of OP's concerns.

[SJ77]

Hi Mark,

Thank you for that detailed clarification. I may also need to clarify my desires.

Firstly I am glad that the HTML resizing is only a result of responsive resizing as opposed to being a replacement for a true image attachment processor. That would have been not only bad practice, but an inexcusable sin. With that out of the way we have made some progress here.

 

Reading your text however, gives the impression that very few use their forum communities as image boards. I would argue that most forums have at least one section, thread or somewhere that is designed for image posting. In some ways image posting is an intrinsic need for internet based text communication. I don't think I am a rare breed user in anyway. As such, I think accommodating this need is one of the more important things any forum software ought to do well.  Image posting is Important!

 

With that said please allow me to re-explain what I think ought to happen.  in order of steps.

1. user uploads 4MB picture of Ford Mustang. --> dimensions 2700px X 2700px

2. image thumbnail is placed in post 100px X 100px  (size: 45KB)

3. a different  user clicks thumbnail and is served 1000px X 1000px image (400KB) -->not 4MB --> this means quality  re-compression on jpeg and image resizing.  Also if open in lightbox or highslide it won't open larger than screen size.

4. underneath image thumbnail  "views 0" becomes "views 1" This step is really important because this is how users gauge which images people are interested in more and gives a sense of what users want to see more of. Trust me on this.. it's imperative for image boards and it's a shame to not have it.

I actually don't think the original uploaded (4MB) image should be thrown out in-case I at any point want to start offering higher quality images.

[SJ77]

@Mark, I think this is a great way to do things. I am fine all down to the thumbnail issue that myself (and a few others) brought up on the preview board that thumbnails aren't re-sized images but in fact scaled down via HTML/CSS. This means each time you load the page, you are loading the full scale image which for a responsive design is a BIG NO-NO. Has IPS given any more thought to this? I know it is a lot asking to do this at this point but just want to make sure it doesn't get overlooked as it is my largest concern w/ IPS4, especially along the lines of OP's concerns.

​If this is indeed what is happening this is totally unacceptable. Actually this will be a fatal flaw that would prevent me from ever using this software until this issue is corrected. There is no excuse for a board of this maturity, sophistication and reputation to not have a real thumbnail image processor. That's not only bad practice but it's an all out disaster that would prevent most of my threads from loading.

 

[The Jimmo]

​If this is indeed what is happening this is totally unacceptable. Actually this will be a fatal flaw that would totally prevent me from ever using this software. There is no excuse for a board of this maturity, sophistication and reputation to not have a real thumbnail image processor. That's not only bad practice but it's an all out disaster that would prevent most of my threads from loading.

 

​Re-reading what Mark posted, I am a little confused so I think it is best to get an answer if I am wrong or not. I hope I am cause I certainly agree.

[opentype]

… you can of course control the allowed file-size (which is of course what matters when we're talking about bandwidth, not dimensions) of any uploads. 

​Mhh, I am not sure what to think about that image size rather than pixel dimension idea. Here are the settings from my WordPress blog:

These sizes directly correspond to my one-column or two-column layouts. So for every image I upload I can use a pixel-perfect version of the image in the full desktop view. There is not one pixel too much in the used images. And that’s what I want. Consistent dimensions which correspond to my design without the need for browser down-scaling. With just a file size upload limit, images dimensions are all messy. 

[SJ77]

yeah I have no interest in limiting the amount someone can upload. Taking one individuals upload isn't a bandwidth problem. The issue is then allowing 20K other users to  download this huge image. That is why the proper solution should be to resize what gets downloaded instead of preventing users from uploading whatever they like.