Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

SunFoxNC · 2018-12-10 05:44:48

For the Backlight 2 site at redvixen-studios.com, I've noticed some interesting behaviour with random sizing of custom thumbnails when displayed by an album set template using the Iconic layout.

The following link is where you can see some screenshots for the gallery that is exhibiting this behaviour so you can follow along with my narrative.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14snZL … 5UeHz1_TW4

If you look at the first screenshot, you can see that the first two thumbnails from galleries created in 2018 are kind of fuzzy and are sizing at 250x167 but the third thumbnail from 2017 is nice and clear sizing at 500x334.

All three of these images were copied as-is from Lightroom into the Custom Thumbnails gallery that has been suggested by Matthew and published using the Publisher plugin. The original images all came from a Nikon D810 with an original resolution of 7360x4912.

The last set of screenshots show the template configuration for the iconic album set used for the galleries.

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Has thumbnail resizing changed significantly in the underlying Backlight 2 code from 2017 to 2018 to explain why newer thumbnails are sizing much smaller? I don't see anything in either of the Backlight changelogs that would apply to this situation. BTW, love having the link to the changelog in the Backlight 2 module management screen...a subtle but very nice touch!

Are there any best practices one could employ to ensure consistent sizing of custom thumbnails for Iconic album sets? Ideally, I'd like them to all publish at least at 500x334 (or larger if possible!) which works well in a three-column album set layout on all of the devices I would view the set.

Thanks!

Matthew · 2018-12-10 05:54:04

Bear in mind that most current-era laptops are now using High-DPI displays. Apple's "Retina" displays, for example, as 2x resolution. So if you want to display an image clearly at 250px, then you need a 500px image. Most phones are 2x, 3x or higher. I haven't seen a 4x display, but I have seen 3x with decimals ...

As a general guideline, I try to publish images 1.5x to 2x the size I intend to display them.

rod barbee · 2018-12-10 06:00:06

what are the thumbnail rendition settings used for the custom thumbnails album?
Has it been changed since first publishing to it?
Have you tried republishing the thumbs for the custom thumbs album?

SunFoxNC · 2018-12-10 06:07:00

That's why I was so surprised at seeing the behaviour I'm seeing...the original images in the Custom Thumbnails folder for that Publisher instance are 7360x4912 which should be more than enough for the 500px maximum width specified in the template for Thumbnail Max-width (that slider is full to the right).

Other than the theatre season poster images (which are sized 375x250 but show up as 250x167 in that album set even though it's well under max width in the template), everything in Custom Thumbnails is either 12mp (D700), 16mp (D7000), or the vast majority 36mp (D810).

I want to say I've tried forcibly resizing the image and then adding it to Custom Thumbnails and noticed no difference after forcing that album set to republish. The only thing I could think of that was different was when the recital galleries were published in 2017...the site was running Backlight 1. The upgrade to Backlight 2 happened before the NC State Fair galleries were uploaded which is what made me think that there might have been some code changes for Iconic between the two versions of Backlight.

Mind you...it's not like you can't tell what's happening in the thumbnail images. It just looks kind of weird when some are fuzzy looking and another one in the same gallery looks nice and clear and the original images were all 36mp photos from the D810.

rod barbee · 2018-12-10 06:31:10

SunFoxNC wrote:

That's why I was so surprised at seeing the behaviour I'm seeing...the original images in the Custom Thumbnails folder for that Publisher instance are 7360x4912 which should be more than enough for the 500px maximum width specified in the template for Thumbnail Max-width (that slider is full to the right)

Your album template cannot produce thumbnails that big (7369x4912). For that matter, I don’t think the large image renditions can be that big.
The setting that matters is the Thumbnail Rendition size in the album template being used for the custom thumbs album. I believe the largest thumbnail that can be produced is 512x512.

So check the thumbnail rendition settings in the album template and try republishing

SunFoxNC · 2018-12-10 08:35:18

Rod...brilliant as always!

Custom Thumbnails was using my default album template which set thumbnails at 250x250...prior to the upgrade to Backlight 2, the recital thumbnails were using a custom album template where the thumbnails were maxed to 512x512 but for some reason that template didn't get migrated.

I've cloned the album template and changed the renditions as suggested and republished...now the thumbnails look uniformly lovely (well, except for those that were being randomly selected but they were using a different template which I've just fixed and I'm now forcing the republish!).

Thank goodness for the "publish only thumbnails" option on the Publisher considering this part of the website has over 36K pictures in it!

Cue Ren and Stimpy doing the "Happy Happy Joy Joy" dance...

rod barbee · 2018-12-10 08:50:22

Community @ The Turning Gate

#1 2018-12-10 05:44:48

Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

#2 2018-12-10 05:54:04

Re: Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

#3 2018-12-10 06:00:06

Re: Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

#4 2018-12-10 06:07:00

Re: Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

#5 2018-12-10 06:31:10

Re: Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

#6 2018-12-10 08:35:18

Re: Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

#7 2018-12-10 08:50:22

Re: Seeing weird custom thumbnail sizing in Iconic album set...

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