Comments on: Auto-optimizing images in Plone

By: Jon Stahl's Journal » Blog Archive » More thoughts on automated image optimization for Plone

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:20:27 +0000

[...] June, I wrote up some initial thoughts about how Plone could to more to help folks with limited experience…. It got quite a bit of favorable response, but then I went off on sabbatical and [...]

By: Jon Stahl

Jon Stahl — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:19:05 +0000

@wichert-
In a world where we have blobs out of the box (soon, I hope), the issues with large file uploads will be lessened, but tying up zope threads still sucks. And slow uploads kinda frustrate users (i’d really love to figure out a way to use flash to do the resize on the client, but that feels a bit too ambitious).
But yeah, poorly optimized images are more of a problem than big uploads.

By: Wichert Akkerman

Wichert Akkerman — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:30:22 +0000

I may be dense, but why is it a problem for people to upload large images? Normally I want people to upload large images, since that gives me much more room to scale them in various ways when using an image in a rendered page. Since visitors always get server the approriately scaled image the original image size is not relevant for them.

The only downsides I can think of are upload time, which is a one time penalty that should generally not be a problem, and ZODB size which is easily solved by moving to blobs.

So my opinions: big-ass images? Yes please!

By: Sam Knox

Sam Knox — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:10:09 +0000

How about a validation script on the Add Image page which checks for filesize? The user would get a portal message telling them to go compress the file before upload. I'd want to allow a setting in plone_control_panel to adjust what that maximum size should be (100Kb sounds like a reasonable default).

For hi-res images, my advice is always to upload it as a File content type, so that the site visitor can download the large version instead of having Plone display it on a page.

By: Vincent Fretin

Vincent Fretin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:49:16 +0000

Hi, in one of my content type, I have an thumbnail image I resize to 58×78 on upload, and crop it on center with the following code:

from archetypes.clippingimage import ClippingImageField
schema = Schema((
ClippingImageField(
name=’thumbnail’,
widget=ImageWidget(
label=”Thumbnail”,
),
storage=AttributeStorage(),
original_size=(58, 78),
),
)
For the ClippingImageField, see:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/archetypes.clippingimage

By: David Glick

David Glick — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:47:52 +0000

A couple people have mentioned TTW configurability of image scale sizes. witsch has already implemented this in plone.app.imaging, which I think is a likely candidate for future inclusion in Plone core.

By: Micha? Mas?owski

Micha? Mas?owski — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:04:32 +0000

In my opinion using OptiPNG (http://optipng.sourceforge.net/) for scaled PNG images would also help. In many cases it may decrease file size twice, so even less data will be sent to the browser. It is slow, but if the request won’t wait for it, this would be useful for images in a Plone instance.

By: Julian Robbins

Julian Robbins — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:01:20 +0000

Hi, As a Plone user rather than developer, I can completely concur with this idea. Also, as the images are shrunk down to predefined sizes in Kupu, many non technical users probably believe that as the image is smaller, than the file is smaller. What you see is what you get .... in this case it isnt.

Simple objectives in usability such as this are incredible important IMHO.

By: thet

thet — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:41:36 +0000

i like all the ideas presented here!
one more thing from me: i would like to see an easier possibility to customize the image sizes to which original images are converted. currently the best solution is archetypes.schemaxtender, but it’s only accessible for developers.

By: Matt Hamilton

Matt Hamilton — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:10:47 +0000

I’m pretty sure ATContentTypes does (or did at some point in time) rescale images automatically on upload. OK, it does still mean that you have to process the large tens-of-megabyte images in the first place, but at least it is not storing them.

On another project I’m working on we’re looking at http://upload.thinfile.com which can split file uploads into chunks and upload them via multiple HTTP POSTs and concat together on the server. I think they have some cunning image-resizing-on-the-client uploader too. Might not be suitable for the general case (esp. licesning) but might be good for specific use cases.

-Matt