Help with Wordpress image galleries!

[Darin Boville]

On my current web site I like everything but my gallery thumbnails. For some reason they are cropped and I can't figure out how to get the software to display uncropped thumbnails. I use the popular NextGen Gallery plug-in. I can't be the only person who wants uncropped thumbnails--I must be doing something wrong.

And WordPress users out there?

--Darin

[Laura_Campbell]

I use NextGen on two websites. Have you checked settings to see if there are options for thumbnails? It'll crop vertical images, but horizontals on my site aren't cropped. You may find your answer on the support forum for NextGen.

[bgh]

Darin--
Given that I am only step forward from using a fountain pen and rotary dial phone, I'm not the best source of advice, but I too just set up a site and blog, using WordPress with NextGen for my galleries. This might be a dumb question (as a certified Luddite, most of my technology questions likely will be dumb!), but did you size them appropriately before uploading them into NextGen? I sized all of mine at a maximum dimension of 600 pixels, at 72. They all came in correctly (even if it is a shame to smush such wonderfully detailed images!).

I'm not sure that this will help, but it is the first thing that comes to my mind. Feel free to be in touch!

Best,
Bruce

[Darin Boville]

I think so--they display correctly when shown at full size--it is just the thumbnails. When I try to re-crop the thumbnails I see the whole image but the crop tool won't let me select the whole image. Weirder, the crop tool preview display doesn't even show as much as the crop tool selector is selecting! Great stuff when you get it set up but getting it set up can be tedious and time consuming...

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

The more I look into this the more I'm getting the sense that uncropped thumbnails are not common--and most of the plug-ins don't seem to have this feature. Very, don't you think?

Any suggestions on other solutions for use in the WordPress environment? Plug-ins, something else? It needs to be easy to set up...

All I want is a grid of small images so that you can clock and a bigger one opens overlaid on the page, and that you can then right/left click to flip between large images without having to go back to the grid view. Standard stuff, I would think.

--Darin

[Laura_Campbell]

There's an alternative to the NextGen plugin called NextCellent Gallery - NextGEN Legacy. The interface is similar to NextGen.

[Darin Boville]

Found the solution. In NextGen Gallery there is a hidden set of options for thumbnails. If you go to Dashboard-->Gallery-->GallerySettings-->Basic Thumbnails you will see an option to "Override Image Thumbnails"--this is a global option. It is set to "No." Set it to yes and several new options will appear beneath it, one of which is "Thumbnail Crop." Set it to yes.

Of course, this introduces two new problems. First, the pictures don't line up nicely anymore. They are all aligned by the top edge. Second, the pictures no longer allow you to to navigate from one large image to the next without going back to the thumbnails.

No doubt these new problems are easily fixable with a few more hours of my time invested!

--Darin

[graeme123 SA]

This as far as I have got, but my portrait thumbs are still slightly cropped at the top. In Manage Galleries highlight one image and then edit thumb, choosing the whole image. Then - Bulk actions - Create new thumbnails, you can un-tick the box.
This gives a better thumb in the gallery, but it doesn't translate into a perfect thumb on the front end.
Graeme

[graeme123 SA]

I have attached the best I have got re the portrait thumbnail. Also very long format images. The long image squashed into a set box without retaining it's proportions.
I think these two issues are linked.
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