Preparing images for online galleries

JJ
Posted By
Jeremy_J_Baker
May 14, 2004
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226
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2
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Closed
I am redoing my website, <http://www.rickbakerimages.com>, and I’m wondering how to prepare images for the galleries. Most sites I see have images that are all the same dimensions. How do you do this without "stretching" the image and not maintaining the aspect ratio? Resize till it’s close and then crop or just turn off "constrain proportions" in Photoshop and type in the same dimensions for each picture?

thanks,
Rick Baker

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JJ
Jeremy_J_Baker
May 14, 2004
Do you turn on constrain proportions first, enter a common dimension (say 500 pixels), then crop to (say 500×332), reapeating this process for each image so every image comes out 500×332 and Aspect Ratio(proportions) are the same and pictures don’t look stretched? Or do you just turn off constrain proportions and enter 500×332 for each image and that way you get 500×332 for each image, though the proportions aren’t the same, but you don’t have to crop anything away?

thanks
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
May 14, 2004
Hi Jeremy,

Unless a non-proportionate change of aspect can be tolerated by an image without making it appear unrealistic, then I don’t think there would be any way to make a variety of image sizes all a common size unless you’re willing to crop some of them. That’s typically what I’ve done. When I have an image that I want to maintain the original aspect of but want to present it at the same size at other images, such as if I’m using some HTML template that always frames an image at 640×480, then I pad up the unused margins with something that I hope doesn’t detract from the image. Not citing this as an example to follow but only to illustrate what I’ve done, you can refer to <http://www.jazzdiver.com/uwpics/akr/frame0063.htm> which is a full-frame image, and then advance to the next image where I’ve filled in the left and right margins with textures and colors made up from the actual image.

More often however, I just forgo the common-size framing and edit the HTML for that unique case and reduce the frame dimensions to match the image. Note, I’m using "frame" generically here…it could be an HTML frame, a table cell, or simply the specified dimensions in the image properties. Primarily, I try to stick with one common dimension, usually the image height, and allow the other to vary as needed to maintain the image aspect. I’m not sure what approach is best recommended for a professional presentation…my work is all just for a personal website that I maintain as a hobby.

Regards,

Daryl

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