How to modify theme item page for image magnifier
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photomanz
Joined: 2010-04-09
Posts: 97 |
Posted: Thu, 2010-06-10 17:30
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Can someone point me in the right direction. I'm trying to modify the carbon (or xtreme would work as well) theme only on the single item (photo) page. Tried Magic magnify (very nice product), but unfortunately it loads the original full size image before it magnifies which takes a long time when we have hi res photos for download. Just not realistic to allow it to download a 5Mb. file every time the magnifier is enabled. Let alone what it would do to the bandwidth, server, and user experience having to wait so long. Looking for the path/page (Gallery2) to modify the header and integrate in some code. Magic Magnify is a really nice product. Is there anyone who is using this type of functionality with hi-res photos? How do you get around the full image download problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated. |
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Posts: 27300
http://www.magictoolbox.com/magicmagnify_gallery/
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 10
For very high res or large file size images (like 5MB), use Magic Touch:
http://www.magictoolbox.com/magictouch_gallery/
It downloads on demand whichever part of the image is requested (similar to the way Google Maps works).
Posts: 97
Thanks for the link. I've already tried them and they have the same problem as described above. Works great as long as the files aren't hi res. If a file is 5mb, then when the magnifier activates, it's going to download a 10mb file and not use the smaller gallery2 version. The magictouch link above looks nice, but I can't see paying a fee every month when there is code readily available to integrate in. I was just looking for a direction in modifying the single item page (to utilize the photo that's there, and not force a full image download) code and how to handle the headers.
Posts: 27300
http://gallery.menalto.com/node/55714
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 10
Nothing can zoom as quickly and smoothly as Magic Touch. It does not download the original 5MB image - it cuts the original image in a one-time operation into hundreds of small image tiles. Then only the part of the image that the user requests is sent to the user. This method is the only way to serve large images fast.
There is a free version of Magic Touch that allows 20,000 free zooms per month which is more than enough for most people.
Posts: 97
Thanks for the info. It looks like a really nice tool. Since you host the images, how do we offer hi res digital downloads? Does our entire gallery2 database go onto the cloud your utilizing or do we have to maintain another separate database of our images for client download? Would we have to double upload everything to both your database and ours? Also, we generate quite a few hi res images. Is the disk space unlimited? Is each "slice" of an image considered a zoom when it's accessed by the client, or is one zoom equivalent to one image?
Can you tell me why it is that the magic magnify downloads the original image instead of utilizing the cached and smaller version generated by gallery2? The smaller sized version defined in Gallery2 is more than adequate for zooming. If there was a software switch or path specification to define the image source within your tool, it would eliminate the problem and greatly increase the flexibility of your product. It's lightning fast (like the demo on your site) with small images.
Thats similar to the way we're planning on writing it if we can't find a ready made solution. If your Magic Magnify tool can do the above, you definitely will have a happy new customer here (and probably many, many more).
Posts: 10
You continue managing your images as you do at present. There is no extra work - it is entirely automated by Magic Touch. You don't need to upload extra images, you literally carry on as normal.
Magic Touch fetches a copy of your hi res image, saves it on the Magic Touch server and cuts it into tiles. The fetching of an image is triggered by setting a class of MagicTouch i.e.:
class="MagicTouch"If you want to offer a file to download, you can still do that because the original hi res image is always on your server.
You have 10GB of free storage which should be more than enough. If you need more, just upgrade.
One zoom is counted per page view, no matter how much zooming in and out the user does.
Posts: 97
Thanks for the reply and info. It is very helpful. Sounds like you have a very, very nice product. The functionality is great. It would though cause a pretty dramatic upswing in our bandwidth as once we upload it, we are effectively downloading the same hi res file to your S3 server. If there was a way to modify Magic Magnify as outlined in the previous post, it would be work great for what we are doing at very negligible extra bandwidth.
Your server based product is nice, but what we need is something that will zoom into the LOW res file that's provided on the gallery item page (just like your demo, small file, fast magnify response). The resolution of those files is more than adequate for our purpose. The Magic Magnify would be perfect for our needs if it had the flexibility outlined in the previous post. We don't need the zoom functionality into a hi res image.
For us and the current project, the cost structure would be prohibitive as our files are very large (10gb. wouldn't last too long) and we get a large number of hits so it makes it viable to develop or purchase a standalone product without the associated monthly fees.
If you come up with a version of Magic Magnify that does what was requested in the previous post, we'll be more than happy to buy it if the price is viable. That would give you an interim product at a higher price point as well between the low end Magic Magnify and the higher end monthly service you offer. We just can't justify a product that has associated monthly fees with the size and volume that we have.
It would be a simple improvement to the product you currently have. I hope that you will consider it. I'm sure your current customer base would appreciate it as well and would offer you up-sell potential to them. Thanks again for all your help. You have a very nice product line.
Posts: 10
Magic Touch only downloads the hi res image once, after that, all images are served from AWS, so your bandwidth might actually fall.
If you use up your 10GB diskspace limit, you can get 100GB storage for $9 per month (Entry Plan).
We will investigate your suggestion to use a different image source for Magic Magnify. (Give us some time as we are all working on launching our new site at the moment!).