How to resize automatically when users upload images by CCK image field

Question

I would like to make the size of images smaller automatically when users upload them using CCK image field.

For example, I would like to let users upload big sized images like 5MB but resize them smaller automatically like 0.5MB before saved on the server.

The reason is that the capacity I can use on the shared server is very limited. Of course I can set "Maximum upload size per file" to a small size but then users who have big sized images but don't know how to resize them before upload will not be able to upload them. I have tried also "image cache" a bit but it doesn't seem to save the files with the name, attributes and in the directory specified by CCK image field.

I don't know if this kind of thing is possible to achieve or not.. Any Idea?

Answer 1

Imagecache is great, but since it keeps the original file around, it won't save space. In fact, if you have multiple presets, it will increase your disk usage as it creates its caches of images of those sizes.

What you may want to investigate is putting some logic into nodeapi() (or, if on Drupal7, its equivalent function) when saving your node that looks at the filepath of whatever image field you are concerned with and does some image manipulation on it if it is over a certain size and then saving it in place.

Answer 2

The module you want is: Max Image Size

This module will resize uploaded images to be below the set dimensions. It is not an image style or other presentation layer module. If you want to maintain the original image you should use Image Resize Filter or an image style. The use case for this module is sites where users may upload very large images, but you do not want/need to keep the original.

This is different from the core image field size restrictions in that it will work on already uploaded files and imported content.

Answer 3

The imagefield cck field (which depends on filefield) provides this capability out of the box. You add a filefield to your content type, set the display widget to "image", and then when you edit the settings for the field one of the settings is called "Maximum dimensions for images". Here you can set this to something like 600x400, or whatever you like. If a larger image is uploaded, it will automatically be resized.

Answer 4

Not really what you're asking for but anyway: You already discovered the Drupal way of handling big images: image cache. If you can, switch to a hoster with a lot of storage (some offer unlimited space).