Crop for better thumbnails
Good thumbnails are hard to make,
because of conflicting requirements. Thumbnails should
be large enough to provide the visitor with a good idea
what the full size image looks like.
On
the other
hand they should be small enough to display a dozen or
more thumbnails on the screen. And
they
should
have a small file size to make sure the index page
loads
fast. Cropping is a good way to create better
thumbnails by putting more information in a smaller area.
Crop and resize
The traditional way to create thumbnails
is by simply sizing down the full sized images.
The
problem with
scaling too much down is that the details of
the image get lost. To prevent this
graphic designers use a combination of crop
and resize. First, the most interesting part
of the image
is cropped. Then the remaining crop area is resized,
resulting in a much better thumbnail.
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Original image
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Resized thumbnail
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Cropped and resized thumbnail |
Cropping the hard way
I hear you say, that doesn't
sound too difficult. Cropping and resizing
an image is easy in any image editor. Where it becomes
tedious though, is when you have to repeat this process
for
dozens or hundreds of images. Think: open the image in
Photoshop,
crop it, create a thumbnail, save it and repeat for
each of your images. And if the result is not good, you
have to do it all over again. One could define a macro
to do it quickly, but unfortunately every
image
has to
cropped in another area,
which is why this process can only be done by hand. Arles
takes a totally different approach, allowing you to set
a cropping
area in seconds and to redefine it if you don't like
it.
Defining a thumbnail crop area
in Arles
Arles lets you define crop
areas for thumbnails without modifying the image. The
crop
area information is stored in the Arles Images Database.
The good thing about this is that you can work much quicker.
To define
a crop area for a thumbnail:
- In the main window click the Browse button to open
the Arles Image Explorer.
- In the Arles Image Explorer select the image for
which you want to set the crop area.
- Select the Image menu > Define thumbnail.

- In the Define Thumbnail Area window use your mouse
to select the area you want to be cropped.

- Select the next image by clicking the right arrow
at the top of the window and select the crop area again.
- To see the results in your gallery, click the Thumbnails
or All button in the main
window.
Another advantage of the crop area
being stored in the database, is that you can always
go back and change the crop area. Or you can remove the
crop area by clicking the Reset button.
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