More thumbnail sizes to pick from

[FKF5482]

It would be great if we could have more than 3 different thumbnail sizes. I could definetely use more, 2-3 more should cover all of my needs. Not a deal breaker as it is now of course but why not make something good even better?

As always thanks in advance

[admin]

You can configurate the 3 sizes here:
Configuration | Preview | Thumbnails | Thumbnail widths and heights

You can tweak the available values here:

Code: Select all

ThumbSizes=32,64,128,200,300,192,450,512,675

But that's not what you meant, right? You want more options to choose from at your finger tips...?

[FKF5482]

Yes exactly, i want more options to choose from as you said.

When you go to: Configuration | Preview | Thumbnails | Thumbnail widths and heights, i want more than 3 thumbnail options.

[admin]

IMO 3 is a good number. Each new size will also create a new database and eat up quite some disk space.

I'm not totally against it but it's not on top of my list.

[FKF5482]

No problem, i understand. There are more important things to fix or add in general and as i've said its not a deal breaker or anything, just a nice addition (to me at least). Keep it in mind and maybe some day you can make it happen.

Thanks for replying and have a nice day

[klownboy]

A possibility to consider though is that you already have 2 additional thumbnail sizes that are available for Tile views. Granted they are squares (e.g., 240 => 240x240) in the tiles view, but they are specified in the actual thumbnail caches (dat2 and dbits files) in the same manner as they are for thumbnails for the thumbnail view. In reality you already have the capability of having 5 different sizes in the thumbnail caches (3 thumbs and 2 tiles). Would it be possible to break the train of thought that those 2 currently tiles view thumbnails are only available to tiles view and allow them (the tile sizes) to be used in thumbnail views as well.

You wouldn't necessarily be increasing the caches. For people like me that don't use the tiles view much, it would be welcome to to be able to use the 2 additional tile size thumbnails in thumbnails view. It would be treating thumbnail sizes more independent of the tile/thumbnail view. Of course tiles views would still be held to the square tile sizes but thumbnail views could also use those 2 tile sizes. Just a thought, since so many have expressed the desire for additional thumbnail sizes over the years.

[admin]

Yes, that's a possibility. But it would also be a bit confusing and would create support needs.

I personally take care to use the same sizes in tiles and thumbs to keep the number of cache files down at 3:

[klownboy]

I personally take care to use the same sizes in tiles and thumbs to keep the number of cache files down at 3

Yes, I do as well, but I've often thought that a couple additional thumb sizes would be nice and the fact that they already exist. Unfortunately though we can't use them in thumbnail view only a tiles view. It would take some serious revamping of thumbnail and tiles views. Off the top of my head I don't see any easy way of making that happen.

[admin]

Actually, there is a plan for some years now: have only one (large) size in the cache and derive all other sizes from that on the fly. It would be somewhat slower than the current solution, but it would have some serious advantages:
1) The slow part (creating thumbnails from the original files) would have to happen only once for all sizes.
2) Less space taken by cache files.
3) One could zoom the thumbsizes freely from very small to very large on the fly.

Disadvantages:
1) Slower (but with CPU as the bottleneck, not disk reading).
2) A lot of work to implement (that's only my problem, of course).

[highend]

1) The slow part (creating thumbnails from the original files) would have to happen only once for all sizes.
2) Less space taken by cache files.
3) One could zoom the thumbsizes freely from very small to very large on the fly.

Sounds very cool. I guess even I would switch to this solution (never really liked the current one, sorry)...

[klownboy]

I was thinking about this again last night... Would it be possible in some way that you provide a tweak that essentially allows the 2 tile thumbnail sizes to be used (trigger) the thumbnail view instead. So when a user sets the tweak (e.g., TileThumbView) to "1", when the user clicks on a tile view instead of showing in a tiles view it shows as a thumbnail view. If the tweak is set to "0", it works as it currently does. No changes to any of the "Views" menus or dropdowns would be necessary. The tweak would simply trigger the thumbnail view. At some later date if you wanted to bring the tweak to the GUI in Configuration | Thumbnails, you could have a setting for "Tile thumbnails display in thumbnail view".

I like your solution long term as well, but you stated,

1) The slow part (creating thumbnails from the original files) would have to happen only once for all sizes.

Doesn't that mean though that the thumbnails for the smaller size thumbnail sizes will take longer to display. I say that now because as it currently is, the thumbnail for all sizes take a while the first time to generate, but after that they are all extremely quick to display, and that's what I like like most about XY's thumbnails.

[admin]

That's why I hesitate to do it. The extreme speed we have now would be gone.

[klownboy]

The extreme speed we have now would be gone.

Yeah, that's what I was a bit worried about. We take a trip, come back and organize the photos, crop some/delete some of them, and and create the thumbnails. After that, it's just reviewing the photos thumbnails and using MDBU. And that's where the speed is important. I can deal with taking some time to initially write the thumbnails (walk away and have a coffee or whatever).

What did you think of that idea in the first paragraph above?

[admin]

Too complicated.

[klownboy]

Too complicated.

Oh well, I thought it might not be too difficult since you wouldn't be changing anything on the interface at all, only internally triggering a thumbnail view in lieu of the tile view if the tweak is set. It may have kept a number of users happy that have been itching to get more thumbnail views.