I need better thumbnailing software!

[Forkbeard]

Please help! I need better thumbnailing software. All recommendations appreciated.

Here's the deal: I'm a fuckin' newbie, so right now I'm crafting my galleries by hand. They suck, it sucks, there is much suckage. I'm getting better, slowly.

One think I like to do for better galleries is make custom thumbnails. In other words, I like to take the center or "action spot" of a big picture and thumb that, linking it to the full picture. You get a lot more value out of a little thumb that way.

Right now, I'm viewing the picture, cropping it to the chunk I want, reducing what's left to thumb size, and saving. Quite a number of clicks done manually with Irfanview, my default image viewer/mangler. Not bad with one thumb, bearable with ten, tedious as hell for thirty.

Is there any software to help automate that process? By which I mean software that will feed me images one at a time, prompt me to select the area to be thumbnailed, then thumnail that to my specified dimensions and immediately present me with the next picture?

I am NOT looking for batch processing software like ThumbsPlus or Eyebatch. They will take a directory and thumbnail everything in it, but they have no ability to let me select sub-areas to thumbnail and they are not good at making uniform sized thumbs when the original pictures vary in size.

Thanks for any and all suggestions!

[smokey]

try webattack.com, they have alot of free downloads. I use easy thumbnails witch I find to be easy and fast.

[Helix]

Hi Forkbeard,

I use Corel Photopaint, and I write a script for it.
You can do the same with Adobe Photoshop.

[Forkbeard]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check 'em out. My version of Photoshop is one of the lobotomized "Home" versions -- distributed free with scanner -- so I'm betting it won't do scripting. I may have Photopaint on a Corel suite disc around here somewhere, and I'll check out Easythumbs. Thanks again!

[eru]

I use a combination Web Thumbnailer 1.5 (very old program) and my own scary HTML coding to make my galleries. I do parts of my galleries by hand, but I do not mind! Pefection comes at a cost.

[hyper]

forkbeard
goto download.com and search for webthumb.

it will make your thumbs, color your scrollbars, make your gallery pages. insert header and footer files. take out the trash and bang the ole lady all at once.

got play around with it, but once you get used to it it's okay.

only thing i dont like is it doesnt save your settings on exit.

[Paparazzi]

http://download.cnet.com/downloads/1...s&cn=&ca=10001

[theWatsonian]

I use Gallery Maker Pro just because it's fast and I never have to look at the images. Photoshop can do it but it takes much longer than GMP. I don't use Arles because for some reason it fails to create a thumbnail from time to time and I have to go make one manually (it's probably just me).

[hyper]

actually u can use this

http://www.irfanview.com/

it can batch rename, optimize, and in advanced settings you can resize all the images to thumbs, just make sure you use a different output folder when doing the thumbs.

p.s it's freeware

[Forkbeard]

Hi, everybody. I appreciate all the suggestions. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I managed to explain the exact feature I'm looking for.

For instance, I actually do use IrfanView right now. It will do batch thumbnails, as will eyebatch and a bunch of others. But all of them, in batch mode, make a thumbnail of the complete original image. Boom, 30 files thumbnailed, no waiting.

But I want to select a portion of each image and thumbnail that portion. Most porn pictures have some action and a lot of frame -- the arm of the couch, the picture on the wall above the couch, the guy's hairy ankles, etc. For my thumbs, I like to make a thumnail only of the little square in the middle of the picture where the eye is drawn anyway -- that way a small thumb can still be recognizable and attractive in a gallery.

Right now, I'm doing this manually with Irfanview, by selecting the portion I want, cropping the file to the selected portion, and resizing the result to create my thumbnail. But that's a lot of clicks, especially with having to manually open each file, specify a filename, save the result, etc.

What I want is a SEMI-automated program. One which will start plowing through a directory I specify, open each file, throw it up on the screen, let me move around a cropping box to select the portion of the image to be included in the thumbnail, and then will
do the crop/resize/sharpen/save with a single mouse click and automatically throw the next file up on the screen so I can start working on the next thumb.

Has anybody ever seen anything like that?

[theWatsonian]

Well, I use JASC's Image Robot for a lot of my tasks such as batch resize, sharpen, etc. It might not be exactly what you are looking for. Check it out at www.jasc.com .

[theWatsonian]

And don't forget to post here when you find a solution. It helps others in the future.

[hyper]

nope

Originally posted by Forkbeard
Hi, everybody. I appreciate all the suggestions. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I managed to explain the exact feature I'm looking for.

For instance, I actually do use IrfanView right now. It will do batch thumbnails, as will eyebatch and a bunch of others. But all of them, in batch mode, make a thumbnail of the complete original image. Boom, 30 files thumbnailed, no waiting.

But I want to select a portion of each image and thumbnail that portion. Most porn pictures have some action and a lot of frame -- the arm of the couch, the picture on the wall above the couch, the guy's hairy ankles, etc. For my thumbs, I like to make a thumnail only of the little square in the middle of the picture where the eye is drawn anyway -- that way a small thumb can still be recognizable and attractive in a gallery.

Right now, I'm doing this manually with Irfanview, by selecting the portion I want, cropping the file to the selected portion, and resizing the result to create my thumbnail. But that's a lot of clicks, especially with having to manually open each file, specify a filename, save the result, etc.

What I want is a SEMI-automated program. One which will start plowing through a directory I specify, open each file, throw it up on the screen, let me move around a cropping box to select the portion of the image to be included in the thumbnail, and then will
do the crop/resize/sharpen/save with a single mouse click and automatically throw the next file up on the screen so I can start working on the next thumb.

Has anybody ever seen anything like that?

[Forkbeard]

Hi, everybody, no solutions yet but I'm making progress.

Arles is too big for me -- it looks like a very powerful tool for generating complex websites but I couldn't quickly see how to tame it for generating the simple tables I need. Plus, its thumbnailing features appear to be limited in the same way as thumbsplus and so many others -- it insists on controlling the final size of the thumbs if you want your aspect ratio maintained, just as all these other programs do.

Webthumb is a really neat program for generating pages, better than the little page wizard in Thumbsplus I was using, but it has the same thumbnail problem of not giving enough control. However, I used it to make my .html for a gallery last night and I rather like it for that.

I love Irfanview -- I wouldn't use anything else as an image viewer -- but it doesn't do what I need either.

Still need to look at Jasc and a couple of the other suggestions here. Don't worry, if I find what I need I'll post it here.

Thanks again for all suggestions!

[403forbidden]

if you can get your hands on Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, give that a try. Use the "photo album" feature in Dreamweaver. Very fast.

[ihateastro]

Might want to check out .Express Thumbnail Creator .... I have used the others mentioned and I like this one the best. It does everything and more... not spam, just a great program.