Making Thumbs

[Licker4U]

I see a lot of sponsors tours with square thumbs but the full size image is a regular image. If I have an image that's say, 600x400, how can I make a thumb that's 100x100? I use Irfanview but to keep the thumb from being distorted it preserves the aspect ratio so the long side stays longer than the short side. What do I need to do?

TIA!

[MrYum]

Originally Posted by Licker4U

I see a lot of sponsors tours with square thumbs but the full size image is a regular image. If I have an image that's say, 600x400, how can I make a thumb that's 100x100? I use Irfanview but to keep the thumb from being distorted it preserves the aspect ratio so the long side stays longer than the short side. What do I need to do?

TIA!

About the only way I'm aware of to accomplish that task would require cropping either before or after the thumb is created. Makes it a two step process, but can also open up a bit more creativity in gallery design

[lorsha]

I usually just make mine by hand. Best results that way.

[Mrs Grissom]

With Thumbnailer it can set it to 100x100 with auto crop maybe you can do this with the program you are currently using?

[Toby]

I use Arles by DigitalDutch to do my thumbs, and resize my large images. It will make square thumbs if you set it up to do so.

However, I also go back and manually re-thumb any that need to be cropped better.

Personally, I'm not wild about square thumbs.

[Ramster]

You have to make them by hand. I make every single thumb I do by hand. Takes longer but much better results. It is called "cropping" the images. Take this gallery for example. http://www.danniashe-freepics.com/white/gallery.html

[Licker4U]

Personally, I'm not wild about square thumbs.

Me either. I guess I used the wrong word. I needed square "images" for an index page as part of a table I'm building. I found out that the "crop" function of Irfanview is what I needed to use. I was trying to use the "cut" function and that wasn't working.

[ladydesigner]

I also make all my thumbs by hand. That gets the best results for what I need to do.

[Jim]

Originally Posted by Ramster

You have to make them by hand. I make every single thumb I do by hand. Takes longer but much better results. It is called "cropping" the images. Take this gallery for example. http://www.danniashe-freepics.com/white/gallery.html

Ramster, have you done a comparison? Making thumbs by hand seems to be a pain in the ass. Wouldn't you be able to make more galleries thus make more money by using software to make your thumbs?

[MightyMidget]

Yeah... making thumbnails is exatcly the kind of task you wouldn't wanna do by hand.. why would you wanna do anything by hand really if u don't havbe to? Scale it to like 150% of your desired size, then crop the center part of the image to your desired size. ImageMagick or whatever will do.

mm never mind me im drunk

[Ramster]

Yes I feel cropping by hand makes a difference. ANd it doesn't take that long.

Jim the problem is making thumbs with Arles means you have a thumb that is identical to the big picture. I have found that using closeups (when cropping the thumbs by hand) enables you to select what to show. For a big tit gallery you crop the tits more often. It is more of a turn on for the surfer. Some people say having the surfer click to see the big pictures turns him on more and gets him in the "clicking mood". More turned on means more apt to click to the tour to see more.

Here's 2 examples:
http://www.nshoneys.com/hosted1/hc/f....php?id=100031
http://www.nshoneys.com/hosted1/hc/g....php?id=100031

Not a big difference but the 30 minutes it takes me to crop by hand I like. And if using sponsor content the logo/watermark doesn't show when cropping by hand.

Licker4u, Photoshop is what most people use for making thumbs.

[ladydesigner]

I totally agree with Ramster - well, except I don't use Photoshop but rather Paint Shop Pro (probably in the minority on that). I use ThumbsPlus to generate the thumbs and gallery pages but then go back and crop the 20 or so thumbs per free site by hand. They just look so much nicer this way.

[Tommy]

I tried all that stuff, Use superJpg

[backoffbitch]

you can crop the images with irfan view. Use the left mouse button to highlight an area, watch the pixel dimensions change in the top menu bar until you have a 1:1 aspect ratio, then let go of the mouse button and hit crop selection in the edit menu. Resize to the size you want and voila.

[backoffbitch]

Originally Posted by Jim

Ramster, have you done a comparison? Making thumbs by hand seems to be a pain in the ass. Wouldn't you be able to make more galleries thus make more money by using software to make your thumbs?

A person who is used to making them by hand only loses 2-3 minutes really by doing so.

[MightyMidget]

Ramster's galleries are nice but seriously they look like they've simply been scaled to a slightly larger size, then the center part was cropped out. Just to be the nerd of the week I'll do the same "automatically":

Aspect ratio*(150% of desired size) = 640/480*150 = 200 (thus x will be 200 pixels, y 150). Do:

convert image.jpg -resize 200 -gravity Center -crop 100x100+0+0 image_thumb.jpg

Now run this through a for loop(if you're running windows):

for %a in (*.jpg) do convert %a -resize 200 -gravity Center -crop 100x100+0+0 thumbfolder\%a

Correctly resized, and nicely centered crops (not identical to the big picture). All done.

[Ramster]

Those galleries I posted are hosted galleries. 2 people made them. 1 used arles and the other cropped them.

As backoffbitch said it takes very little time to crop the thumbs. 30 minutes might be what it takes me to do them all plus the 2 90x120, 88x88, 110x150, 100x130, 100x150, 180x135, 135x180, 120x160 thumbs I have to make anyway for the tgps I submit to.

Here are 2 of MY personal galleries you're not going to get close ups of pussy face and tits without cropping no matter what program you run:
http://www.danniashe-freepics.com/white/gallery.html
http://www.superporner.com/silviasai...o/gallery.html

But to each his own. Once you start making them by hand it really is simple.

[Toby]

I try to find a compromise between doing all thumbs by hand and using Arles. Let's take one of the sample galleries Ramster posted as an example. http://www.nshoneys.com/hosted1/hc/f....php?id=100031
I would still use Arles for this gallery, but I would have set the thumb size such that the watermark in the lower part of the image would have been cropped, which would have also cropped a little off the top. I would still need to go back and manually thumb images 7 thru 10 to get more girl and less bedspread.

That said, the focus of most of my galleries is stockings & heels or boots, so I want mostly full body shots rather than focusing on big tits, not that I have anything against big tits.

I'd say that about a fourth of the time I make all the thumbs manually, a fourth of the time I use all Arles thumbs, and the remaining half end up with a mix of both.

It's all a matter of ending up with nice looking thumbs that are going to make your galleries more appealing to your target audience than the galleries of your competitors.

[jayeff]

Hand-cropping thumbs is going to get you more galleries listed and more clicks to those galleries. Whether that translates into $$$ is another question entirely.

From my experience, the more you crop and optimize thumbs, the higher the level of expectation you introduce among surfers. And the problem is that at some point you have to expose them to the reality of the actual content that you and/or the sponsor are offering.

Some, mainly softcore, sponsors do offer genuinely high-quality content for both their members and affiliates. But there is an increasingly high proportion of TGP's, MGP's and gallery submitters who have turned their thumbs into near-blind links, since the content to which the thumbs lead is of dramatically poorer quality.

It's a problem, because the sites to which you submit don't care about you making money: only about their own sites looking good. And as more submitters do hand-prepare thumbs (well), "regular" thumbs won't get as many clicks. But if, as you should be, you are concerned about your income and not just clicks, you might find it pays best to strike a balance.

[Licker4U]

Originally Posted by backoffbitch

you can crop the images with irfan view. Use the left mouse button to highlight an area, watch the pixel dimensions change in the top menu bar until you have a 1:1 aspect ratio, then let go of the mouse button and hit crop selection in the edit menu. Resize to the size you want and voila.

Yep, that's what I did

[johnnybg]

Originally Posted by Toby

I try to find a compromise between doing all thumbs by hand and using Arles. Let's take one of the sample galleries Ramster posted as an example. http://www.nshoneys.com/hosted1/hc/f....php?id=100031
I would still use Arles for this gallery, but I would have set the thumb size such that the watermark in the lower part of the image would have been cropped, which would have also cropped a little off the top. I would still need to go back and manually thumb images 7 thru 10 to get more girl and less bedspread.

That said, the focus of most of my galleries is stockings & heels or boots, so I want mostly full body shots rather than focusing on big tits, not that I have anything against big tits.

I'd say that about a fourth of the time I make all the thumbs manually, a fourth of the time I use all Arles thumbs, and the remaining half end up with a mix of both.

It's all a matter of ending up with nice looking thumbs that are going to make your galleries more appealing to your target audience than the galleries of your competitors.

You can edit an area of picture in Arles, which will be on thumbnail, before actual creation of thumbs. Just go to image browser, press F7, set aspect ratio, make a rectangle and then pg up/down for other images.