Resizing and Cropping images manually within an entry.
Development and Programming
I have a client that wants to have a full-sized image and a custom cropped thumbnail of the same image per channel entry.
Auto image manipulation just won’t work because each image will have a different crop area to it.
The only way to do this now is have him upload two of the same images to file manager, go in and crop/resize one of them, then go back into the entry and select each appropriate file for “full size” and “thumbnail.”
It’d be nice if there was some way when adding a new entry or editing that the image manipulation can take place right there in the entry.
Is this even possible? I looked at some add-ons and couldn’t find anything.
Hate to say it but Wordpress has this feature when you add media within a post or page. So something along those lines.
Hey skodaminotti,
I’m not entirely certain, but if I’m understanding your question correctly I’m thinking you should be able to achieve this behavior with ChannelImages (CI) addon (http://www.devdemon.com/expressionengine-addons/channel-images)
With ChannelImages I’ve been able to accomplish some pretty cool things that weren’t available to me with EE’s native image manipulation.
For example: You could probably setup a duplication on upload with ChannelImages (within the config for CI you can setup any number of actions from re-sizing, to scaling, to manipulation, image duplication, even compound actions.) to take care of creating the non-cropped image.
Then to enable the ability to create that custom crop, enable the action for the image edit features - I think this is on the 2nd screen within the CI config screens.
So how I see this happening in this example, is on each entry upload they’ll upload 1 image, ChannelImages with automatically create you duplicate image (including any re-size/scale, whatever you need.), then once the upload has completed, and still within the upload screen you user should now be able to edit their image creating the custom crop, they’ll save and they’re complete.
The resize, duplication, etc all happen behind the scenes. These features work well for things like creating large product detail images, index page thumbnails, etc.
Within your EE template file you’ll reference which image you want shown by referencing the image action’s name (you set these up when you’re setting up the configurations), this allows granular control over which images show, where and how.
I usually prefer to leave the setting for keeping the original image “on” because that way you can create new actions without needing to re-upload the images. Then just re-run your actions and it’ll be applied, it’s pretty cool.
As far as your content publishers are concerned, all of this functionality can take place right inside the edit entry area so they won’t need to add the files within the file manager when adding images to entries either.
I’ve had clients who have publishing sites as well as eCommerce sites use ChannelImages and they’ve really liked working with it.
Let me know if this helps you out.
Take care, Reuben