anyone know good thumbnail generation method?
 

im trying to stop photoshopping thumbs.. but they look so damn good! imagemagick and php gd library both suck so bad at resizing images.. anyone feel like sharing secrets if they have a better way than using photoshop? (saves me downloading then reuploading)

I have the same problem too. I tried other stuff, but in the end Photoshop always gave the best results.

obviously none can compare to photoshop....

photoshop actions can help streamline the process... basically use preset selection ratio and select the part of the image to be cropped, then create an action to crop, sharpen, save the thumb to a specified location, and close the image. makes it really quick and easy once the action is setup.

yeh thats how i have it now, select the area click f5 and then its done, and it always looks great :/ i have it set up the same in my web based cms, with the exception that after i select the area and click crop it makes the girl look like a horse when it saves it :/

Media Resizer Pro FTW

http://www.digitaldutch.com/arles/ Thats a pretty good program but needs a bit of setting up.

All the hosted galleries we produce we still manually crop and resize in Photoshop. Its still the best method for creating quality thumbs without heads cut off or distorted images. Time consuming but we would not do it any other way and worth the effort.

i was gonna recommend thumboom.com but looks like the site is down